This is a traditional German Christmas Cookie recipe from Aachen Deutschland.

2 egg whites
1 cup powdered sugar
zest from ½ lemon or orange
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 knife point ground cloves
10 oz (weight) very finely chopped almonds (or mix half almonds and half hazelnuts)
baking parchment

Preheat oven to 265º F.

Beat egg whites until stiff. Add powdered sugar slowly through a sieve and continue to beat (you now have “eischnee” or “egg snow”). Reserve and chill 3 tablespoons of the eischnee for the icing.

To the rest of the eischnee, add the cinnamon, cloves, zest and chopped nuts and mix into a dough. Note that no flour is used in this recipe – the finely chopped nuts are the flour. The dough will very dense but not sticky. Should the dough be too sticky, knead in more powdered sugar and nuts, a little at a time.

Prepare your baking pan by placing a baking paper onto it. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough out over a cut-up freezer bag covered with powdered sugar to about ½ inch thick. Cut out stars with a cookie cutter and immediately lay out onto baking sheet. Dip your cookie cutter often into powdered sugar to prevent sticking. Add more powdered sugar to reserved eischnee to make icing, and paint each star with a brush, knife or small spatula. Bake for about 10-12 minutes in your very slow oven until icing just starts turning slightly brown.

Author: Rob | Tags: christmas, cookies, german, traditional

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 13th, 2009 at 8:48 AM and is filed under dessert, recipes.