Spritz Christmas Cookies

These were my favorite cookies to have at my Aunt's house at Christmas time. I would search the entire cookie tin to find these, making sure I had actually found all the ones I could, and ate them all up. Spritz cookies actually means 'piped' and you make them using a piping bag and large star nozzle or cookie press. I own neither of the items so I just roll out small balls, and drizzle on some dark chocolate, which is a must. This recipe come from one of my countless Christmas cookie books, and I do believe this paricular recipe come from 'Himmlisches Weihnachtsbacken', although you'll be able to find the recipe in any ordinary german cookbook.
Spritzgebaeck:

• 100g butter
• 100g caster sugar
• pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 150g flour
• 100g cornflour
• 40g almond flour
• 3 tablespoons cream

Pre-heat your oven to 180C/350F

1. Cream together the butter,sugar,salt vanilla and egg-until light and fluffy.

2. Then add the cornflour and cream beating well until incorporated.

3.Finally add the flour and almond flour and beat until well incorporated.

4. using a piping bag and a large star tip, pipe wreath,'s' or finger shapes. 

5. Bake for 12-13 minutes until lightly golden around the edges. 

Advent Cookies

Today is the first...
day of advent. I was thinking instead that I would have a different cookie everyday instead of having a chocolate. Mostly the chocolates in the advent calendars are all the same, but if you made a differen tocokie for each day of advent there would be some change. Since it's around christmas time anyway it's time to get cookie baking anyway. These are one of my favorite cookies, super nutty and crumbly on the inside, light and vanilly-sugary on the outside.





Vanille Gipferl
Adapted from Koestliche Weinachtsbaeckerei

• 180g all purpose flour
• 100g ground almonds
• 100g ground hazelnuts
• 70g sugar
• 200g (1 cup/2 sticks) butter
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 egg
• 5 packets vanilla sugar 
• 50g powdered sugar

Method:

1. Combine the flour,ground nuts,sugar,butter and eggs until a dough forms.

2. Place the dough into the fridge for 30 minutes.

3. Cut the dough into equal sized pieces, then roll each piece into an individual log, the end smaller than the middle. 

4. Pre-heat your oven to 180C

5. Form the dough into a crescent shape, transfer onto a baking sheet then bake for 10-15 minutes. 

6. Place cookies on a cooling rack, and cover in powdered sugar and vanilla sugar.

 In cause you can't buy ground almonds or hazelnuts, you can just use your kitchen machine to grind them up, I did it this time and they had quite large chunks of nuts, which I didn't really like, so if you can you should try and get pre-ground nuts.