Vanille Kipferln (Almond Crescents)

These were my favorite christmas cookies growing up so I just had to make them this year.

The Goods:

2.5 cups all purpose flour
2/3 cup sugar
1.5 cups ground almonds
1 cup COLD butter
3 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (or better, if you have the option, 1 pack vanilla sugar, which you can find in the german aisle of the commissary)

powdered sugar for dusting.

The Works:

on a large board (or just your counter, you need some room so I use the counter of my island) sift the flour. Mix the sugar, vanilla extract (or vanilla sugar), almonds into the flour. Add the butter in pieces and the egg yolks and then knead to a smooth dough. Wrap the dough in cling wrap and cool in the fridge for an hour.
Pre-heat your oven to 360 degrees, line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

on your counter (or board, whatever you used), roll the dough out in portions into a long snake (kinda like a pretzel snake) till it is about 1/2 inch thick....cut 1 to 1.5 inch pieces, form into a crescent (halfmoon) and place on cookie sheet. Bake for 12 to 15 min. As soon as the cookies come out of the oven, dust with powdered sugar and let cool.

Store in a plastic container, it will keep the cookies soft and soften them if they got a bit too hard.

Enjoy

Schwarz-Weiß Gebäck (black and white cookies)

This one is for you brattypooh.

Ok, the recipe in itself is basically the recipe for butter cookies, but with the adding of chocolate powder for part of the dough to create a black/white effect. Let's get to it, shall we?

Ingredients:

- 2 sticks or 1 cup of softened butter

- 1 cup sugar

- 1 pack vanille sugar, if you can't get that... add 1 teaspoon of vanille extract into the dough while mixing it

- 1 egg yolk and 1 complete egg

- 2 tablespoons rum 

- 2 cups flower (sieved)

- 3 tablespoons chocolate powder for the dark dough

- 1 eggwhite for basting (to glue doughs together later)

the Work:

Whip the butter, egg, sugar, vanilla until they form a foamy dough, add the rum and keep whipping. Slowly add the sieved flour. spread out on a board and kneat into a dough. split the dough into 2 euqal parts, working the chocolate powder into 1 half to get a dark dough.

cool doughh in fridge for at least 1 hr. To keep dough from mixing it is best to use 2 cutting boards for this next part. roll an eual amount dark and light dough out to about 1 inch of thickness. baste the white dough with some of the eggwhite and lay the black dough ontop, then roll back up, keep the new mixed dough rool cool.

Heat your oven to 375. spread parchement paper over your cookie sheet ( rtust me, much better than relying on the nonestick surface of said cookie sheet), take your doughroll and cut thin slices. Place on cookie sheet and back on center rack for around 10 min.

Let cool and enjoy