Traditional Austrian Vanillekipferl
My great-grandfather decided it would be wise to leave Vienna as tensions were rising in mainland Europe at the start of the Second World War. He packed up and moved his family to the UK, where my grandmother would later meet my grandfather and start her own family. While I grew up in England and feel very British, there's no doubt that there are many Austrian influences that remain within our family.
At Christmas each year, it has become tradition for our family to devour vast quantities of Vanillekipferl, usually after Christmas dinner amongst other goodies, but I seem to find myself popping one or two into my mouth while preparing the turkey. This is my great-grandmother's recipe that has been handed down from generation to generation, and I hope it will be passed on to many more to come.
If you don't have a food processor, you can chop the almonds and rub them with the butter and flour before kneading in the sugar and yolks to create a dough ball.
Ingredients
- 100g whole almonds
- 200g all-purpose flour
- 150g cold butter
- 50g caster sugar
- 2 egg yolks
- 20g vanilla sugar
Method
- Preheat the oven to 200ºC/400ºF. Line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper.
- Quickly blitz the almonds in a food processor to finely chop them, then add the flour, butter and sugar and blitz again until the texture of fine breadcrumbs.
- Add the yolks to the food processor and blitz briefly again until a dough ball is formed.
- Take 14g walnut-sized pieces and shape them into small crescent-shaped forms and place them on a baking sheet.
- Bake in the oven for 10 minutes. As soon as you remove them from the oven, roll the crescents in vanilla sugar before leaving to rest on a cooling rack.
