Walking around the city during Christmastime at home in Austria it is common to see stores and cafes selling homemade Christmas cookies called "Platzl" or "Plätzchen", we have a great variety of different kinds of cookies. Here in Finland I feel that this is different, the only Christmas cookie offered in the stores and cafes is Piparkakut which is the Finnish Gingerbread, but even this is mostly just available as the plain version. In Austria and Germany we have only with Gingerbread sooo many different versions. Of course I don't know if someones Grandma makes really great traditional Finnish Christmas cookies but out in the streets of Turku, Tampere or Helsinki I didn't find any. Therefore, Steffi, Lea and I decided to make some traditional Austrian and Germany Plätzchen. After some shopping for the ingredients we met at Leas kitchen and started baking "Vanillekipferl". With good Christmas music some candles and the smell of freshly baked cookies we had a very nice "christmasy" atmosphere. Here is the recipe we used
Vanillekipferl:
500 g flour
160 g powdered sugar
400 g butter
200 g rasped almonds
2 pk vanilla sugar
covered in powdered sugar and vanilla sugar
combine everything for the dough and knead it well together, let it rest for 30 - 60 min in a plastic foil in the fridge
after resting form the dough into the half moon shape and place them on a baking sheet int the oven with 175°C for 15 min till they are a nice golden brown color.
