Vanilla Stars (Vanillesternchen- German Christmas Cookies) |
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Prep Time: 10 Minutes Cook Time: 60 Minutes |
Ready In: 70 Minutes Servings: 1 |
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People raved about these elegant and easy cookies I made as gifts during the 2006 holiday season. I originally found the recipe in Brigitte, a German fashion magazine, in their November 2005 edition. Ingredients:
200 g cold butter |
400 g pastry flour |
150 g sugar |
1 pinch salt |
1 egg |
flour, for rolling |
100 g butter |
2 vanilla beans |
80 g powdered sugar |
100 -150 g quince jelly |
Directions:
1. To Make Dough:.
2. Cut the cold butter up into small pieces and mix together with the rest of the ingredients in a kitchen mixer with a kneading attachment. Later knead with hands into a smooth dough (could also use fork if you don’t have a food processor). Wrap the dough in Saran wrap and let rest in the refrigerator for at least an hour.
3. Vanilla Topping:.
4. Preheat the oven to 200°C (375 F.).
5. Melt butter.
6. Slit the vanilla beans with a razor lengthwise and scratch out the insides with the tip of a sharp knife.
7. Stir half of the vanilla essence and one hollowed vanilla hull into the melted butter.
8. The rest of the vanilla and the other hull mix with the powdered sugar.
9. Sprinkle work space with flour and roll the dough until it is even and about 3 millimeters thin. With a small star cookie cutter (4 cm) cut out stars and lay them on parchment paper on a cookie sheet.
10. Bake cookies in oven for about 10 minutes(try not to let them get brown).
11. Immediately after baking brush or dip the surface of every star with the vanilla butter sauce and let them cool.
12. Warm up the quince jelly in a small sauce pan on the stove and stir until smooth.
13. Brush half of the stars with quince jelly and thickly sift the vanilla powdered sugar mixture over the other half.
14. Store in an air-tight container. These cookies take a few days to fully ripen so it is a good make-ahead cookie for the advent season.
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