Zimtsterne or Cinnamon Stars

At this time of the year, thousands of Germans are attending baking lessons to find about the best method for baking better Zimtsterne as their neighbours do. Newspaper articles are written about what is the safe daily amount for kids to eat of these cinnamon stars. To put it short: Zimtsterne are THE German Christmas cookies. And luckily, if you have a good recipe, they are actually not that hard to make!

I was lucky to find the perfect recipe right in the beginning. It’s from a small book called Lieblings-Winachtsplätzchen. Making Zimtsterne takes some time - for my 40 stars or so I spent 90 minutes in the kitchen - and you need to be practically glued to your oven to make sure your precious little stars don’t overcook. But like I said, it’s not difficult.

For about 40 little stars you need:

• 400g ground almonds


• 3 tsp cinnamon (I use only Ceylon cinnamon these days, not the Cassia variety)


• 1 pinch of salt


• 16g vanilla sugar


• 2 egg whites


• 100g powder sugar

And for the meringue topping:

• 1 egg white


• 100g powder sugar


• 1 Tbsp lemon juice

In a bowl, combine almond, cinnamon, vanilla sugar, and salt. In a baking bowl, beat egg whites until they form soft peaks, then gradually add powder sugar and continue beating until firm again. Add almond mixture to the egg white mixture and stir with a wooden spoon until all ingredients all well combined.

Take this wet dough in your hands, form it into a ball, and place between two layers of cling film. Roll it out (still between the cling film) about 1cm thick. Remove the upper layer of cling film and cut out small stars using a cookie cutter. (The dough is sticky, so you might need to dip the cutter in some powder sugar.)

Now comes the hardest part: on each star, you should spread an even layer of meringue topping (beat the egg white until soft peaks form, add gradually sugar and lemon juice and beat until very firm again) - with a brush, it said in my recipe. My baking brush is quite big and it just didn’t work with these small stars, so I used an espresso spoon. I took one star at a time in my left hand and used my right hand to place a half of an espresso spoon of the topping in the middle, then spread it to each point.

Bake your stars in a preheated oven (150 C) for about 10-15 minutes. Don’t let them get any colour! If they are still a bit wet but you fear they’ll gain colour, reduce the temperature and let them dry just a bit longer.

After they have cooled, place your cinnamon stars in an airtight container.

And what is the amount of Zimtsterne that kids can safely eat per day? Well, if you’re using Ceylon cinnamon, you don’t have to worry. But if you prefer Cassia cinnamon, kids should not eat more than three of your stars a day - the coumarin it contains causes liver damage (!) in bigger amounts.