Thread: Christmas cookies

Time to start baking the christmas cookies so they are ready to eat for the advent weekends.

My first recipe prepared today is my favorite.

Ingredients

250g butter
250g sugar
350g wheat flour, not self raising
1 or 2 tbs milk
a pinch of salt
vanillin


NO baking powder for this recipe. NO egg.

Put the butter in a pot and heat it slowly with occasional stirring until it gets brown. Then cool it down until cremy consistence. Usually it gets hard then stir until creamy again.
Add the sugar and milk and stir until well mixed. Add the flour, salt, and vanillin. stir again. Finish with kneading the dough by hand. With a machine you end up with plenty of little crumbs.

Form the dough into 2 or 3 rolls with app. 4cm diameter. It is a bit tricky as the dough has a tendency to fall apart. Cool the rolls for a few minutes, maybe roll them into baking paper to keep them stable.

Then cut slices of app. 5-6mm thickness and place them on a baking tray covered with baking paper. Give enough space as they grow sidewards during baking.

Bake them for app. 10-12minutes in a preheated oven at 180-200°C in an convection oven. They should be only yellow to very slightly brown.

The brown butter flavor is something special.


Yum

pics please

Sorry the olfactory sensor of my camera broke down.


Without it the pictures don't mean much.

BTW with reference to that margarin vs butter thread, in this recipe the butter cannot be replaced with margarine.

What is vanillin?

The same as Vanilla Essence?

Vanillin is an artificial vanilla aroma mixed with a little sugar that is commonly used in Germany. Vanilla essence should be ok, I don't know it. I just know that I once bought some US made liquid vanilla flavoring and did not like it at all. Real vanilla could be used by exposing it to sugar for some time but never did that so don't know how to do that for this recipe.