Vanillekipferln (Vanilla crescents) (Austrian)

Around here (Germany and Austria) whenever the holiday season approaches, people go crazy with the plaetzchen (little Christmas cookies) mania. These little biscuit-like vanilla-scented half-moons, originally made in Vienna, are among the most popular and common such sweet bite-sized cookies. 
Don't know how it is around where you might be from, but here and back home (in Romania), the Christmas spirit is already very active around the streets :). Our main gift (a baby girl) will arrive a few weeks later than Christmas though, but we're more enthusiastic as ever as the term approaches :D. 
Enjoy your plaetzchen with warm milk and wait for Santa! Be good! :)


P.S: We're also featuring this recipe in the Sweet Romania December challenge. Tis' the season!


Last year: Spicy turkey fillet in tomato-coriander sauce and Buttery penne with smoked salmon.



Ingredients (makes a small batch):

• 1 egg
• 100 g butter, softened
• 60 g white sugar
• 1-2 tablespoons vanilla powder sugar
• 30 g ground almonds (they don't need to be blanched before grinding, like for macarons)
• 100 g all purpose flour
• extra vanilla powder sugar for dusting

A small note before we begin: there are two ways of making these: with or without a special tray with crescent-molds (it can be found in larger supermarkets around the world even if the cookies are not traditional there. At least so we've seen). We have such a tray, but we've also made these last year, before buying it, so we'll present both ways here :). First, the faster method using the tray:


Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Mix the dry ingredients:

Melt the butter in a small pot. Use a pastry brush to butter the tray:

Mix the dry ingredients with the butter and lightly beaten egg:

Put the resulting batter into the tray's crescent molds (you can just push it with your fingers, it's very elastic).

Put in the preheated oven and bake for 15 minutes or until light golden. Then allow to cool and reverse the tray over a serving plate. Dust the cookies generously with vanilla powder-sugar.


If you're not using a tray (second method), increase the quantity of ground almonds to 100 g (to make the batter a bit harder) and just shape the kipferln with your fingers (make a short cilinder and bend its margins to form a crescent), like we used to do last year before finding this special tray. Baking time and heat should remain at 15 minutes and 180 degrees Celsius. Use baking paper so they don't stick to the baking sheet. That's it, good luck and Merry Christmas!