Friday 23 December 2016

short but sweet - vanilla & almond crescent cookies

Last week I turned my apartment into a sauna. I guess you could say it was my way of doing a pre-Christmas detox.

For some idiotic reason I thought it'd be a genius idea to bake cookies and mince pies in my little kitchen on the hottest night in Sydney in 159 years. Am I mad? I'm starting to think so. It was so unbearably hot that I slept with an ice pack and Arthur didn't leave the bathroom tiles unless it was to play with the ice cubes I gave him to cool off. It took a good 2 days to finally feel the cool change... oh how I miss summers best friend - the afternoon southerly!

But amongst the heat I baked: what felt like batches and batches of Christmas mince pies - homemade mincemeat and all, panforte - which I've come to realise, I don't actually like eating but wish I could turn it into a scented candle, WP chocolate cookies - delicious but unexpected, gingerbread snowflakes - on the crispier side, vanilla and almond crescent cookies from Classic German Baking and also almond toffee that is my absolute weakness covered in dark chocolate.

A little late but I guess better then never, I thought I'd share a Christmas cookie recipe with you for any keen bakers out there wanting a last minute christmas gift or like me, have a shortbread christmas breakfast tradition. These little crescent shaped cookies are drowned in icing sugar and melt in your mouth. Perfect on Christmas morning with a cuppa in pyjamas.

I wish everyone a wonderful Christmas and hope their day is full of all the best things... good company, great food and lots of laughs. Stay safe my lovelies x

vanilla and almond crescent cookies | salt sugar and i

vanilla and almond crescent cookies

recipe from Classic German Baking by Luisa Weiss (ever so slightly adapted)

175g plain flour
120g butter, at room temperature
250g icing sugar
100g blanched ground almonds or almond meal
2 tablespoon vanillezucker/vanilla sugar * (or super fine caster sugar + 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)
1 egg yolk
pinch salt

- Put the flour, butter, 50g of icing mixture, 1 tablespoon of vanillezucker/vanilla sugar (or caster + extract), ground almonds, egg yolk and salt in a bowl of a stand mixture with the flat paddle attachment and beat until all ingredients are combined. If making by hand, place above ingredients into a medium bowl and combine using a had mixer on low and then bringing the dough together with a wooden spoon at the end or mix entirely with a wooden spoon.

- Split the dough into three equal portions and roll reach piece into 2.5cm thick cylinders. Wrap in cling film and place in the fridge for at least 1 hour or up to 24 hours.

- Preheat oven to 165C/325F and line 2 baking trays with baking paper when you are ready to bake.

- Remove logs from the refrigerator and slice each log into 12mm slices. Roll out each slice until it's about 5cm long and the ends are tapered but not pointy. Place on prepared trays and repeat with remaining dough. Space the cookies about 2.5cm between them on all sides.

- Bake for about 10 - 15 minutes or until ever so slightly browned on top.

- While the cookies are baking, mix together the remaining icing sugar and vanillezucker/vanilla sugar (if using) in a shallow bowl. When the cookies come out of the oven, let them cool for only a minute or two and very carefully dredge them completely in the sugar. Cool the dredged cookies on a wire rack and if still sticky, dredge a second time in the sugar to get an extra powdery coating.

- The cooled cookies can be stored in an airtight container for up to 3 weeks.

*vanillezucker/vanilla sugar
2 cups granulated white sugar
1 vanilla bean, cut into quarters

Place all ingredients into a food processor and blitz until the vanilla bean is finely ground and well distributed, the sugar should be powdery/very fine. Store in an airtight container indefinitely.

6 comments:

  1. These cookies look delicious!!!
    Wishing you Merry Christmas

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Manu!
      I hope you had a lovely Christmas and New Years too :)

      Delete
  2. I LOVE crescent cookies! Your recipe sounds wonderful! I haven't made them is so long!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Katrina! I love all cookies drowned in sugar :) these and mexican wedding cookies are my favourites!

      Delete
  3. I adore these cookies at this time of the year! Good on you for baking in such heat - sounds like something I would do too ;-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Only at Christmas would I be so mad to turn the oven on and bake rounds of cookies ;) must be the silly season!

      Delete

Thanks for stopping by, I love hearing from you! x

...

#giveaway 15 minute meals 30 minute meals 5 Minute Food Fix A Common Table A Kitchen in the Valley A Modern Way to Eat Acquacotta Adam Liaw Alison Roman Alison Thompson almonds Amelia Morris Anna Jones Annie Herron Antonio Carluccio Anya von Bremzen apple apps Apt 2b Baking Co Artisan Sourdough Made Simple Ashley Rodriguez autumn avocado babies baby baby shower bacon Bake baked pasta baking Bali Barcelona Cult Recipes basil BBQ beans beef beetroot Bill Granger biscuits blondies Bon Appetempt Bowl & Spoon bread breadcrumbs broccoli brussel sprouts burgers burrito buttercream butternut squash byo cabbage cake calzone camping Carla Lali Music carrot cauliflower chicken childhood chilli chinese cooking chipotle chocolate chorizo chutney Claire Ptak Classic German Baking Classics 1 Classics 2 coconut Comfort Food cookbook addict cookies cordial corn cucumber curry custard Cynthia Chen McTernan Date Night In David Dale Delicious. magazine dessert Dining In dinner party nightmares Dinner: A Love Story dip doings Donna Hay Donna Hay Magazine dumplings easy egg eggplant Eleanor Ford Emiko Davies Emilie Raffa Emma Spitzer ENOTW Every Night of the Week Veg family Fast Fresh Simple Feast Feasting fennel fiction Fire Islands Five Quarters Flora Sheedan Florentine Food & Wine Food52 Fresh & Light Fress frozen dessert Fuchsia Dunlop galette Gatherings Genius Recipes Gennaro Contaldo Gennaro's Fast Cook Italian Gennaro's Italian Bakery Gennaro's Pasta Perfecto! german ginger gnocchi goats cheese granola Greenfeast gumbo Gwyneth Paltrow Happenings holiday home home-grown herbs How to be a Domestic Goddess hungry Hunter Valley ice-cream indian Indonesian Cooking involtini It's All Easy It's all Good jam Jamie Does Jamie Magazine Jamie Oliver Jamie's America Jamie's Great Britain Jamie's Italy Jane Hornby japanese Jenny Rosenstrach Jessica Fechtor Julia Turshen Justine Schofield. The Weeknight Cookbook kale Karen Martini kimchi Kitchen korean Kylee Newton LA Cult Recipes Land of Fish and Rice leek lemon lentils life Light of Lucia Link Love links long weekends love Luciana Sampogna Lucio Galletto Lucy Tweed Luisa Weiss Maggie Beer maple Marc Grossman Marcella Hazan Marian Burros Martha Stewart Matthew Evans meal planning meatballs meatloaf mess mexican Michael James Michelle Crawford mince mint miso Monte Carlos Mum's cooking mushroom mussels My Berlin Kitchen My Kitchen Year Naturally Ella new beginnings New York Cult recipes Nigel Slater Nigelissima Nigella Bites Nigella Express Nigella Lawson No Time to Cook noodles North West Island nostalgia Not Just Jam NotWithoutSalt oats omelette paddle pops parsley pasta Paul McIntyre Paul West Paulene Christie pea pecans pesto pickle pickles pie pizza Plenty Plenty More plum pork potato prawns preserving prosciutto pudding pumpkin quesadilla quinoa Rachel eats Rachel Khoo Rachel Roddy ragu rambles raspberry recipe rhubarb rice risotto River Cottage Australia romantic Ruth Reichl saffron salad Sally Wise salsa verde Salt Fat Acid Heat Samin Nosrat sandwiches Sara Forte sausage Save with Jamie schupfnudeln seafood sesame Seven Spoons Simon David Simple slow cooker Slow Cooker Central Small Victories Sophie Hansen soup sourdough Sprouted Kitchen starters Stephanie Danler Stir stir-fry stuffed sushi Sweet Amandine sweet potato Sweetbitter tahini Taking Stock Tara O-Brady Taste Tibet Tasting Rome thai Thai Food Made Easy The Art of Pasta The Best of Maggie Beer The Comfort Bake The Dinner Ladies The Little Book of Slow The Little Paris Kitchen The Modern Cook's Year The Modern Preserver The Naked Chef The New Classics The Tivoli Road Baker The Violet Bakery Cookbook The Wednesday Chef The Zen Kitchen thyme Tom Kime tomato tuna turkey tuscany Two Greedy Italians Two Red Bowls Valeria Necchio vanilla veal vegetables vegetarian Veneto vietnamese wedding wedding cake What can I bring? What to Bake and How to Bake it Where Cooking Begins Where the Heart is yoghurt Yossy Arefi Yotam Ottolenghi Yumi Stynes zucchini