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.

Hallongrottor - vanilla cookies with raspberry

How cool is this: I’ve been baking small vanilla-raspberry cookies out of my favourite Swedish baking book, Underbart ät gott, for more than two years now, and only today did I find out that they are also German Plätzchen called Husarenkrapferl! In our family they will still be called hallongrottor, though.

Hallongrottor are very easy to bake, but there’s one challenge regarding the ingredients. According to the recipe, you need 60g of marsánpulver. Now if you live anywhere else than in Sweden you probably don’t have a clue what that is or how to get it. I’ve got my own Swedish provider (than you, Erik!) so I’ve been too lazy to find out how to replace it. Marsánpulver is a powder consisting of cornstarch and vanilla aroma, so I guess you could replace it by cornstarch and vanilla sugar. Then again, Sweden is really worth visiting - maybe this would be a perfect excuse ;)

For 25 hallongrottor/Husarenkrapferl you need

• 225g butter or vegan margarine


• 85g sugar


• 250g all-purpose flour


• 60g marsánpulver


• 1 ⅕ tsp baking powder


• 1 pinch of salt (if using non-salt butter)


• raspberry jam

Preheat your oven to 180 C. Cut the butter into small cubes and place in a baking bowl. In another bowl, combine sugar, flour, marsánpulver, baking powder, and salt (if using). Work the mixture with your fingertips until fine and crumbly, then form into a ball. If necessary, add 1 Tbsp cold water.

Divide the dough into 25 parts. Roll each of them into a small ball and place on an oven tray covered with parchment paper. Press a hole in the middle of each cookie, using your finger, and fill the holes with raspberry jam. Bake about 12-15 minutes, or until well cooked but not brown yet.

Lemon Madeleines

Now that I took my Madeleine form out to bake Bärentatzen, it’s also time to bake lemon Madeleines! They might not be a traditional Christmas thing, but they mix well into an assortment of Plätzchen. Ever since I read the famous passage of Proust’s "In Search of Lost Time" (and successfully faked in an exam having read the rest of it, too) I wanted to taste these small lemon-scented delicacies - and was rewarded when I finally got to taste them. Maybe it’s because these were the first I tasted, maybe not, but these particular ones taste to me better than any other ones! The recipe is from Professional Baking, and I’ve just adjusted the amount of lemon in them - up.

For about 28 small madeleines you’ll need

• 60 g egg yolks


• 10g demerera sugar


• 15g honey


• 8g grated lemon zest


• 60g egg whites


• 75g sugar


• 1g salt


• 3g baking powder


• 90g all-purpose flour


• 90g melted butter

In a bowl, mix together yolks, demerera sugar, honey, and lemon zest. In another bowl, combine dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder). In a third bowl, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, then add sugar while continuing to beat, and then beat until a firm meringue. In the yolk mixture, fold alternately the meringue and flour mixture. Finish by folding the melted butter. Chill the batter for at least 20 minutes in the fridge (or on a cold balcony). This is very important - if you bake the madeleines right away, they don’t gain the desired consistency (been there, done that ;) ).

Preheat your oven to 180 C. Butter your Madeleine pan(s) and using two teaspoons, place about 1 - 1,5 tsp batter into each hole. Bake 6-7 minutes or until golden brown. Now it gets exciting - will your Madeleines develop the famous “bosse” or not? One tip I heard is that the batter should be really cold and the oven set to 240 degrees in the beginning for an optimal “bosse” result. I tried that, and for one batch it did work! For the other ones it didn’t, though.

Remove Madeleines from the pan and bake the next batch as soon as the pan has cooled so much you can butter it.

Store Madeleines in an airtight container.

Bärentatzen, "bear paws"

A German friend of mine specifically asked me to bake Bärentatzen, or bear paws, since her mother doesn't normally bake them. Well, I don't blame her. If you follow the traditional recipe and buy the equipment needed, it's very time-consuming and expensive. But if you take some shortcuts, I do recommend you try baking these marshmallow-like chocolate cookies. They are irresistible!

Greek Christmas Cookies with Orange and Honey

I love cookbooks where every single recipe works. Recipes from My Greek Kitchen written by Rena Salaman is one of those rare books: you choose any recipe and can be sure that the result is perfect. After a Vanillekipferl disaster from the previous days, this was the book I needed now. I chose these traditional Greek Christmas cookies flavoured with orange, honey, cinnamon, and brandy - a heavenly combination!

These cookies are made without eggs and butter, so apart from honey, they’re vegan. For a 100% vegan result, either leave the last step out (they taste great even without), or make a syrup using agave syrup instead.

I made one small change to the recipe, though: instead of walnuts, I used pecans. Walnuts tend to get rancid very easily, whereas pecans keep better, so I rarely buy walnuts.

For about 35 cookies you need:

• 150 ml olive oil


• 95g sugar


• 1 orange - juice and grated zest


• ½ tsp baking soda


• 350g flour (I used spelt 630 this time)


• 1 tsp baking powder


• pinch of salt


• ½ tsp cinnamon


• 4 Tbsp brandy

And for the syrup:

• 150ml water


• 100g sugar


• 250g honey


• 1 tsp cinnamon

• plus some walnuts or pecan nuts, chopped coarsely

Mix olive oil with sugar. Add zest, brandy and baking soda to the juice (it will foam a bit, that’s normal). In a baking bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon, then add oil-sugar mixture and juice mixture. Mix the dough with a wooden spoon until it’s smooth. Then form small balls (mine were 20g or so) with your hands and place them on an oven tray covered with parchment paper. Press them down gently with a fork and bake about 15 minutes in a preheated oven (180 C), or until pale brown.

When your cookies come out of the oven, it’s time to prepare the syrup: combine water, sugar, cinnamon, and honey in a pan and bring to a boil. Let simmer over a low heat for 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Drop a couple of cookies at a time in the syrup (my pan fit 8 or so at a time), let them simmer for 1-2 minutes and then remove with a skimmer onto a plate. Top with crushed nuts while the cookies are still sticky!

These cookies are quite sweet, so they taste great with a strong espresso.

Vanillekipferl - the Recipe That Worked

As the title suggests, I had some problems finding a good recipe for little vanilla crescents - to the extent that I was about to declare the word Vanillekipferl as my new least favourite German word (the current one being Mittelohrentzündung). These originally Austrian delicacies look very innocent, but it’s very hard to find a balance between a tasty one and one that is possible to bake. Either they’re too dry and tasteless, or they spread too much in the oven (like in the picture below), or they won’t hold together after baking and crumble all over.

With my fourth try I finally managed to bake the perfect ones and I’m happy to share this recipe with you. Note that most recipes use ground almonds instead of hazelnuts - to my taste, the ones with hazelnut have much more flavour! But if you want, you can replace the hazelnuts with ground almonds.

For about 40 crescents you need

• 200 flour (I used 100g whole-grain spelt, 100g all-purpose flour)


• 100g hazelnuts, ground


• 1 pinch of salt


• 80g sugar


• 8g vanilla sugar


• 100g butter or margarine (I used a mixture of both)


• 1 egg (small/medium)


• plus some vanilla flavoured powder sugar for dusting (I just mixed together powder sugar and vanilla sugar, but the best result you get if you split a vanilla bean, place it in a glass jar with sugar and let stand 24 hours or so)

In a baking bowl, combine flour, hazelnuts, salt, sugar, and vanilla sugar. Cut the butter into small cubes and add to the flour mixture. Work with your fingertips until fine and crumbly, then add egg and work the dough until it forms a ball (if not, add a tiny bit a water until it does).

Now most recipes tell you to let the dough rest for one hour, two hours, or even overnight, but I didn’t feel it made any difference whatsoever. So just form tiny crescents (mine were about 12g each) with your hands - this is actually the hardest part! Place the cookies on an oven tray covered with a parchment paper.

Bake in a preheated oven (180 C) 10-12 minutes, or until the edges are pale brown. Let the crescents cool 2-3 minutes, then transfer on a plate, using a spatula. Dust generously with vanilla-scented powder sugar.

I’m intrigued to see how well these keep. Hopefully very well: I’ve got hundreds of them - most of those from batches that look horrible but taste delicious :)

Rosinenhäufchen mit Rum

So finally I’m trying out an authentic German Plätzchen recipe! These are very easy and quick to do - and taste heavenly! They are my son’s favourite cookies - and in case you wonder, kids can eat them safely, because the rum is first cooked and then still baked so no alcohol left..

For about 25 cookies you need

• 100ml rum


• 100g raisins


• 100g sugar


• 100g butter or margarine


• 1 egg


• 200g all-purpose flour


• 1 pinch of salt


• ½ tsp baking powder

Preheat you oven to 180 C. Place rum and raisins in a pan, bring to a boil and let simmer 2-3 minutes or until most of the rum has been absorbed. Let cool. In the meantime, beat butter and sugar until the mixture is fluffy. Then add the egg and beat one minute more. Combine flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl and add to the sugar-butter-egg-mixture together with rum and raisins. Mix with a wooden spoon until all the ingredients are well combined.
With floured hands, form small balls (mine were about 25 g each) and place on an oven tray (covered with parchment paper). These cookies don’t grow much in the oven, so you don’t need to leave a lot of room between. Bake 10-15 minutes, or until golden brown. Let cool - and hide well! Or eat right away with your favourite warm drink.