The Christmas Bakery—Vanillekipferl and Zimtsterne
Long entry warning
To start with, two classics which I thought even I could master. Ha.
Of course, nothing ever goes smoothly, but you can do better by learning from my mistakes!
These particular biscuits were baked together because I need yolk for the Vanillekipferl, egg white for the Zimtsterne. Use small-medium eggs.
Both recipes use hazelnuts for flavour. Try to find the full amount, especially for the cinnamon stars, although ground almonds can be substituted. Any ground nuts should be roasted very briefly to bring out the full aroma. Ground hazelnuts are not available in greater Tadley, so I used whole. Roast briefly in a heavy pan, shaking (they burn easily), cool and rub off as much of the peel as possible. Then place under a heavy knife, near the handle, and press down as if bashing garlic, but more gently. Move the knife along under pressure to smear the bits of nut out over the cutting board. Chop slightly to break up any remaining chunks and you’ll end up with finely ground (!) hazelnut. You can use a coffee grinder, but the nuts are oily and will take up other flavours.
The secret of this pastry is its sandy texture. This can be achieved in two ways:
- use of butter to shorten the pastry,
- use of low-gluten flour (i.e. not bread flour)
The dough has to be worked quickly, using little cubes of ice-cold butter.
I wanted to make sure that I got it right. To be on the safe side, I bought ’00’ grade soft Italian cake flour from the speciality section at Sainsbury’s (alternatively, you could use 1/3 cornflour to 2/3 plain flour). The pastry ended up so short that it crumbled on sight… On second thoughts, plain old flour is fine!
Another (old) tip: one of the biggest ruses in Germany is the sale of very expensive little sachets of ‘vanilla sugar’. Make your own by infusing caster sugar with a few used vanilla husks. I have just thrown out my old ones and replaced them with fresh after baking this pastry—they’ll last for about a year! Just keep filling up the jar with sugar and give it a few shakes every time. Unless otherwise specified, this ‘vanilla sugar’ is used in all these recipes.
You will need to weigh the ingredients.
315g flour; 125g (infused) sugar; 190g ice-cold butter, cubed; 30g ground hazelnuts; 5g baking powder; 2 egg yolks; 1 vanilla pod, seeds only
Sift the flour into a bowl, make a well and pour in the sugar, add a pinch of salt, the nuts and baking powder. Lightly beat the egg with the vanila seeds (this way it’s easiest to disperse them). Add and then work in the cubed butter with your fingertips (you will get repetetive strain injury). Finish by rubbing the dough between the palms of your hand to work in the butter evenly.
If the butter isn’t worked in evenly, the pastry will crack:
On the other hand: if you overwork the dough, it ends up being tough. Take your pick.
Split the resulting pastry and make 2 rolls, about 4 cm thick.
Wrap in clingfilm and chill for at least 1 h. Pre-heat the oven to 175°C.
Cut each roll into about 20 slices, bash quickly into a box-shape then roll into little sausages with your fingers, using a bit more pressure at the ends to make them tapered. Gently bent into little crescents (‘Kipferl’). Smooth over any cracks.
Place on a baking sheet covered with grease-proof paper (reusable!) and bake ca. 10 minutes so that the bisquits remain light in colour. At least, that’s the theory.
Cool and dust with icing sugar.
The secret of this delicate pastry is all in the baking. They should be just done, so that they crumble into fine, vanilla-flavoured sand in your mouth. I’ve waited with posting this, because I wanted to see how this turned out.
The first thing to remember is to pre-heat the oven to the correct temperature, and not to 125°C as in my case (temperature settings are marked in 50° increments, and the 200° mark ended up on the wrong side…). likewise, check that your conversion is correct. No wonder my bisquits didn’t brown (good), but crumbled instead (not good).
Good luck…
The amounts given in the link are not quite correct. Use a total of 125-150g ground hazelnuts and almonds. You’ll need to use tons of almonds for future recipes anyway, so keep some in reserve.
As mentioned above, the hazelnuts add an indispensable flavour. Although this is a gently spiced biscuit (as opposed to, say, Spekulatius) it might benefit from the merest pinch of allspice and, perhaps, mace. I’ll try that next time.
Although this biscuit is made with meringue mixture, it is not intended to be ‘fluffy’, but rather chewy—verging on the edge of hard. Again, the secret’s in the baking. I ended up drying mine out in the oven at 100°C the following day (I couldn’t do it that night, because I had to bake a chicken dinner next).
This recipe does not require flour, the star cutter can be dipped in either flour, ground almonds or sugar to prevent sticking. I used flour: put some in a ramekin dish and coat the cutter by swirling it around briefly.
Adding a few drops of water (or lemon juice) to the meringue before coating may give a smoother coating and better texture—I haven’t tried it (as you can see from the title photo). Painting on the glaze didn’t work for me either, try spreading it with a miniature palette knife or the back of a spoon.
2 eggwhites; pinch salt; few drops lemon juice; 70g vanilla (infused) caster sugar; 50g ground hazelnuts; 75-100g ground almonds; ½tsp cinnamon
Beat the eggwhite with salt and lemon juice until stiff, then drizzle in the sugar and beat to a creamy meringue mixture. Set aside 2 tablespoons.
Stir in the remaining ingredients, adding ground almonds until the dough almost stops being sticky.
Sprinkle more ground almonds over a piece of baking sheet-sized clingfilm, put dough in centre—shaped into flat, adjoining patties—sprinkle with ground almonds and cover with a second sheet of clingfilm. Now roll it out to ca. 0.5cm thickness, and transfer to fridge.
Chill at least 20 min. Pre-heat the oven to 175°C.
Cut out stars and transfer to a baking sheet, covered with grease-proof paper. Gather the remaining dough bits into the centre of the cling film, cover again and bash out flat. Although the dough is by now warm (and sticky!), this works if you keep sprinkling on almonds. Cut out as many stars as possible.
Mix the reserved meringue with a bit of water and brush/spread over stars to give a thick-ish glaze.
Bake on lower shelf for ca. 18 minutes (you guessed it—underneath the Vanillekipferl!). The glaze should remain white.
Ideally, reduce the oven temperature and let the biscuits ‘dry’ for a further 30 minutes. The trick is to retain a bit of chewy-ness, yet this should be a reasonably hard cookie.
PS. That was a crap idea. Take your eyes off for a minute and the things turn brown. 
But at least they are now rock-hard as well! Way to go…
Denni