What we have been eating recently 1

You know me folks, I'm really into my cooking (and eating the fruits of my labours), so I thought it would be good to post occasionally about what's been happening in the kitchen here in Auckland and share some of the triumphs and disasters.  My original plan was to take you on a tour of Kiwi specialities, but I haven't got round to testing anything yet, so here's something from - of all places - Austria instead.

Grab one quick, these don't last long!

This definitely falls into the 'triumph' category, oh yes yes yes.  Ladies and gentlemen, I present Vanillekipferln.

One of the benefits - there are a few - of having a young baby is spending a lot of time sitting down and feeding it, so I've been doing a good deal of reading in the last twelve weeks since young Harriet arrived.  During a recent browse of the shelves at the local library, I picked up a book because the title appealed.  Death and the Maiden turned out to be a detective story set in Vienna in 1903.  The detective on the case and his psychiatrist friend/sidekick (I think the author was operating under a bit of Sherlock/Dr Watson influence here) spend a fair amount of time in various Viennese cafés partaking of tasty treats, one of which was the aforementioned Vanillekipferln.  Cue another trip to the library to pick up a book on Austrian baking, and I'm ready to roll.

Vanillekipferln - Vanilla Crescents

Ingredients

For the biscuits:

280g plain flour

50g icing sugar

210g unsalted butter

100g ground almonds

2 large egg yolks

For the coating:

250g icing sugar

5 tabs vanilla sugar*

40g caster sugar

Recipe credit Tante Hertha's Viennese Kitchen: A book of family recipes, Monica Meehan and Maria von Baich

The recipe book says to start with cold butter and use a food processor to process to fine breadcrumb texture with the flour and icing sugar.  I only have my trusty vintage Kenwood Chef, so I had my butter at room temperature and diced it first.  Then add the almonds and egg yolks and mix into a smooth dough.    Wrap the dough and refrigerate for one hour.

After this time, break off walnut sized pieces of dough and roll between hands to form a cigar shape about 6cm in length.  Bend into crescent shapes and cook at 180°C for 18-20 minutes or until pale gold.

In the meantime, mix the coating ingredients in a large bowl.  As soon as the Kipferln are cooked, carefully roll them in the sugar mixture.  Yes, you will burn your fingers but this needs to be done while the biscuits are hot or the sugar won't stick.  You will probably also break a few biscuits in the process, but hey, I reckon eating those is a fair reward for the cook.

While the biscuits are still slightly warm, store in a container with a tight-fitting lid - again, this is to help the sugar to stick.

*You can probably buy vanilla flavoured sugar somewhere - you certainly can in Germany where it's the normal way of adding vanilla flavouring to cakes etc, but it's easy enough to make by storing a split vanilla pod in a small jar of sugar.  I didn't have any pre-vanillaed sugar though, so I improvised by mixing some natural vanilla paste into the sugars.  This left little black speckles in the sugar which I thought looked quite pretty.  Obviously you can't just add vanilla extract for this recipe or you'll be halfway to making vanilla icing, which is not what you're after.  

This quantity should make 48 Kipferln.  I stuck half the dough in the freezer and made a second batch a few days later.  

I nibbled some of the dough while I was mixing and didn't think it was anything special, but once baked and rolled in the sugar - oh boy.  Crisp and crumbly in texture and with a gorgeous vanilla aroma, this is a superlative biscuit indeed, and I defy anyone to eat only one.  I've found it hard enough to walk away after 3 (well, they are quite small...).  

I think these would be really delicious with lemon or chocolate to flavour them instead of vanilla, so I plan to experiment further.  If you make these, please post a comment and let me know what you think.    Oh, and I can recommend the detective story too!