Vanillekipferl are one of the favourite, and by far the most famous Christmas shortbread biscuits that just melt in your mouth. They are delicately crumbly, buttery, generously and luxuriously coated in vanilla flavoured icing sugar which makes them seriously delicious and are a fantastic addition to any biscuit platter during the holiday season.

There is a reason why some recipes come into fashion and then go out of fashion, and why other ones get passed on through the generations. The recipe for Vannilkipfel most defiantly falls into a latter category, and that is why they have been baked in my family for generations, and this is also the reason I make them every Christmas, and not only then!

This biscuits have been popular in most of central and Eastern European countries, where they are also easily found in bigger supermarkets, but nothing can compare to when they are homemade. They originated in Vienna, Austria, and it is believed that they were created about 400 years ago, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire celebrated its victory over the Ottoman Turks. Apparently, the locals created this pastry in the shape of crescent moon (kipferl) as seen on the Turkish banner. Austrians have created quite a variety of crescent shaped goodies, being sweet or savoury, like potato gnocchi crescents.

For me, they bring back wonderful memories during the festive period. My maternal grandmother would make a seriously big amount of them. I very vividly remember her making them ahead for the Christmas season and storing them on the small kitchen table in a long hallway, that was not heated (which led to the toilet). Somehow, we children increased the frequency of needing the toilet, and the pile of the biscuits would slowly go down. My grandmother never said anything, in fact, she got great pleasure knowing that we loved her baking, and this is what baking and cooking for others can do. It can create pleasure and memories that sometimes stay with you forever. Well, this type of festive biscuits certainly did just this for me.

These days, in order to make these biscuits, you just go to the food store and buy already milled walnuts and almonds (the most frequently used nuts for this recipe) but this was not quite the case when I was little.

Making Vanillekipferl was a huge deal, my paternal grandparents had a very big walnut and almond tree in the front garden, they had to harvest the nuts in the Autumn, dry them, clean them, crack the shells and remove the kernels, then mill them with mouli grater - quite a job I would say, no wonder they were so special and appreciated!

I am sharing here my maternal grandmother Iva's recipe for these heavenly delicious festive biscuits. If you try to make them this festive season, I will not be surprised if you will continue to pull the recipe out every holiday or Christmas season from now on. I am baking them every year and making sure the traditions stays alive...

Recipe

Ingredients

250g plain white flour, sifted
200g unsalted butter, very cold or frozen
80g caster sugar
2 egg yolks, lightly beaten
120g ground walnuts (hazelnut or almonds or any combination you like)
pinch of sea salt
1 ½ Tsp vanilla extract
vanilla flavoured icing sugar

Method

Put the walnuts into a small food processor or mini food chopper and pulse until finely ground. (the texture is really up to your liking, you can pulse and mix the nuts to a finely ground consistency, or leave them to be more coarsely grounded, I prefer the latter). You can also use store bought already ground almond flour.

Put the sifted flour into a food processor or a mixing bowl. Add cold butter cut into small pieces or coarsely grate it, if using frozen butter.

If using a food processor, pulse and mix, until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Alternatively, if not using a food processor, rub in the butter together with four fingertips.

Add caster sugar, lightly beaten egg yolks, vanilla extract, ground walnuts and a pinch of sea salt. Stir with the fork first to combine all the ingredients and allow them to bind together.

Knead lightly until the mixture forms a smooth dough. You can do this in a bowl or transfer onto a working surface.

Wrap the dough in a cling film, put it in a fridge and let it chill and rest for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180C static or equivalent.

Cut the chilled dough into quarters. Take one quarter and wrap the rest of the dough in cling film and put it back in the fridge, so the dough stays nice and cold.

Pinch a small piece of the dough, roughly the size of a small walnut (if you want to weight, 14g will give you biscuits that are not too small nor too big)

Roll each piece of pastry into a small strip (sausage) and twist it into a crescent or horse shoe shape. Do not use any flour on the working surface when rolling and shaping the crescents (if the dough is quite wet and sticky use tiny amounts of flour).

Arrange crescents on a baking sheet or tray previously lined with baking parchment (do not grease or flour the baking sheet) leaving some space apart, as they will rise a bit during the baking.

Bake until lightly golden in colour, about 15 minutes.

Leave them on the tray for about a minute or so, and let them cool ever so slightly, but you want the biscuits to be still fairly warm for coating them with sugar (the sugar will stick best, when the biscuits are still warm at the moment of rolling them into vanilla flavoured icing sugar).

Put the vanilla floured icing sugar in shallow dish or bowl.

Put warm walnut crescents, one by one, into the icing sugar and coat them completely. Handle the biscuits very gently, they are fragile and break easily.

Place the coated crescents onto a plate or a tray.

Leave to cool and store in an airtight container or a cookie box.