Vanillekipferl are vanilla crescent cookies filled with nuts and dusted in a generous coating of vanilla sugar. These delicate cookies are perfect for holiday cookie trays and are a popular European treat.
Heather's recipe summary
Flavor/texture: Tender, buttery shortbread cookies filled with ground almonds and dusted with confectioner's sugar.
Yield: 24 cookies
Similar to: Heidesand Cookies
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Ingredients and substitutions
- Ground almonds - Can be substituted with almond flour or other ground nuts, like walnuts, hazelnuts, or pecans.
- Vanilla sugar - This ingredient can be omitted if you don't have any on hand. I've also included instructions on how to make vanilla sugar below (and in the recipe card) if you'd like to make your own.
How to make vanillekipferl
- Add almonds to a food processor.
- Pulse until you have a coarse meal texture (like above).
- Pulse cold butter cubes and flour until pea sized bits. Add remaining ingredients and mix until just combined. Refrigerate at least 1 hour, then use a medium cookie scoop to portion out dough.
- Form dough balls into small logs and then curl into crescent shapes.
- Place crescents on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake at 350F for 12-14 minutes or until tops are set and edges are lightly brown.
- Dust hot cookies generously with vanilla sugar mixture then allow to cool.
Heather's Top Tip
For accurate results every time, use a kitchen scale to measure flour by weight. If you don't have a kitchen scale, use the spoon and level method. Stir the flour (especially if it's been packed down in a bag/container), then gently spoon into the measuring cup, leveling off the top with a knife. Scooping with a measuring cup compacts flour into the cup and adds up to 25% extra to the recipe, resulting in dry, bland cookies that don't spread properly.
Tips and tricks
Where to find vanilla sugar - I found these packets of vanillinzucker on Amazon, which I used in this recipe (and in my Zimtsterne recipe).
Make vanilla sugar with vanilla beans- Check out this post by The Kitchen Maus: Vanilla Sugar. She compares several types of vanilla sugar and shows you how to make your own using vanilla beans.
Make vanilla sugar with vanilla extract - In a food processor, combine ¼ cup of granulated sugar with ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract. Spread it out to dry. Once dried, the sugar will be clumpy. Transfer back to the food processor and pulse until you have a sugar consistency again.
Handle dough minimally - The more you handle the dough, the softer and stickier it becomes. The warmer the dough, the more it will spread when baking. If needed, return your dough to the refrigerator until it firms up again.
Don't grease your baking sheets - Adding a layer of grease to a baking sheet causes cookies to spread more in the oven while they bake. Instead, use parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
Keep an eye on your cookies in the oven - Baking times in any recipe are recommendations based on the writer's experience and can vary greatly based on your own oven settings. Ovens can run hotter or colder than the next, even when set to the same temperature. Keep an eye on your cookies instead of the time, and take them out when they look done.
Frequently asked questions
If your cookies are dry and also bland, it sounds like too much flour was added to the recipe. Measure your flour by weight instead of using a measuring cup, which can add up to 25% extra flour to a recipe. See my section above on how to prevent dry cookies for more tips.
This recipe contains the proper ratios of wet to dry ingredients, including plenty of moisture-retaining ingredients, and will not turn out dry or bland if the proper measurements, ingredients, and baking recommendations are followed.
This can happen when your dough is too warm or the baking sheet was greased instead of lined with parchment.
- Don't skip the step of refrigerating your dough. Refrigerating not only helps the flavors meld, but also makes the dough easier to roll into balls and reduces spreading.
- If your dough is still spreading in the oven, try refrigerating the dough crescents and sheet pan for 10 minutes, then transfer directly into the oven.
- Use parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Do not use a greased cookie sheet. A layer of grease/cooking spray makes cookies of any kind spread more in the oven.
The dough may be too cold (maybe left in the refrigerator too long), or too much flour was added to the dough. Weigh your ingredients rather than scooping with a measuring cup, which often adds too much flour to the recipe.
- Leave dough on the counter top to warm slightly before baking. Cold dough spreads less and warm dough spreads more.
- If too much flour was added to your dough, you'll want to make sure your cookies aren't also overbaked - this combination results in a dry cookie.
Recommended
📖 Recipe
Vanillekipferl - Vanilla Crescent Cookies
Ingredients
Cookies
- 1 cup (226 g) unsalted butter, cold
- 2 cups (240 g) all-purpose flour, *measured properly
- 1 cup (96 g) ground almonds
- ½ cup (57 g) confectioner's sugar
- 1 tablespoon vanilla sugar, *
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
Dusting sugar
- ⅓ cup (38 g) confectioner's sugar
- 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla sugar, *
Instructions
Cookies
- Slice cold butter into cubes. In a food processor, add flour and cubed butter. Pulse until butter is the size of small peas. Alternately, use a fork or pastry blender to incorporate butter into flour.
- Add the remaining ingredients to your flour mixture - ground almonds, confectioner's sugar, vanilla sugar, and salt. Mix until combined. Dough should be crumbly, but hold together when pinched between two fingers. If you're having trouble getting your dough to come together, add up to a tablespoon of water and mix until a dough forms.
- Toss dough out onto wax paper or parchment. Form into a disc, wrap, and refrigerate for one hour (or up to 24 hours).
- Preheat oven to 350℉ and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Scoop dough using a medium (1.5 tablespoon) cookie scoop. Roll the ball of dough between your hands to make a log, lay 2 inches apart onto your baking sheet, then gently turn the ends into a crescent shape. Work quickly and handle the dough as little as possible to avoid warming it with your hands.
- Bake for about 12-14 minutes, or until edges are lightly browned and tops look set.
Dusting sugar
- Meanwhile, combine confectioner's sugar and vanilla sugar in a small bowl.
- Immediately upon removing cookies from the oven, top each cookie generously with prepared dusting sugar.
- Transfer to a cooling rack and allow to cool completely before storing.
Equipment Recommendations
Notes
- * How to measure flour properly: Use a kitchen scale to measure flour for accurate results every time. If you don't have a kitchen scale, use the spoon and level method. Stir the flour (especially if it's been packed down in a bag/container), then gently spoon into the measuring cup, leveling off the top with a knife. Scooping with a measuring cup compacts flour into the cup and adds up to 25% extra to the recipe, resulting in dry, bland cookies that don't spread properly.
- Buying vanilla sugar: If you do not have vanilla sugar on hand, it can be purchased on Amazon.
- Making vanilla sugar: In a food processor, combine ¼ cup of granulated sugar with ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract. Spread it out to dry. Once dried, the sugar will be clumpy. Transfer back to the food processor and pulse until you have a sugar consistency again.
- One packet of vanillezucker/vanillinzucker contains about 1.5 teaspoons of vanilla sugar. To make 24 cookies with this recipe, you will need 3 packets of vanilla sugar, or 4.5 teaspoons.
- Nuts: Almonds can be substituted with walnuts or hazelnuts if desired.
- More tips: Be sure to check out my 10 tips for baking cookies, based on reader comments and questions!
Thank you for posting this recipe. I've been trying to make these cookies for the last few Christmases from a very old recipe with little direction. Your method worked perfectly. I added a little bit of lemon zest to the dough per the Austrian recipe I was given and everyone in my family thinks they are perfect this year!
Hi Maureen, glad you enjoyed the recipe. Lemon zest sounds like a great addition!
The cookies were absolutely 5-star cookies, and I thank you for excellent ingredients and clear writing. The method, as written, didn’t work for this non-food-processor user, in Canadian winter.
Here’s why: using my pastry cutter until the cold butter was small-pea-sized, in my draughty 17C/62F kitchen, and then mixing in the other ingredients with my wooden stirring paddle, left me with crumbly, dry stuff that resembled fine, sandy river-shore gravel, more than dough.
Being an experienced pastry maker, I knew that a tablespoon of water would not be enough, but if I used enough water to get the dough to stick together, the cookies’ delicate texture would be lost.
What I did was put the dough in the microwave, on low power (30%) for ten seconds at a time, checking temperature & texture after each 10 seconds. After 2 turns, it was soft enough. I gently folded the dough a few times, briefly pressing it flat with cold hands, to form that disk. It worked! I then rested the dough at room temperature for about an hour. When I came back to it, I formed my crescents, & baked, according to the recipe.
I put my homemade vanilla sugar in a spice grinder, until it was a fine powder. I whisked about a quarter cup of the vanilla powder into 2/3 cup confectioners’ sugar.
Setup for dusting the cookies: I had a pie dish with 1/2 of the sugar mix ready. Beside this I placed a rack, under which I had spread waxed paper. I placed a small sieve in the bowlful of sugar-mix on the other side of the rack.
Immediately on taking the cookies from the oven, I transferred them via spatula, three at a time, into the pie plate full of sugars. I shook the plate a little, to ensure their bottoms were sugared. Working quickly, I plucked them up and onto the rack. I then sprinkled them with sugar from the sieve. I repeated this until all the cookies were sugared. As I came to the end of the dozen on the cookie sheet, I had to put them back into the still-hot oven for a few minutes. If the cookies cool, the powder won’t stick.
I made these as a gift for a European friend. I can’t eat wheat, so I gave a cookie to my sweetheart to try. He said they were delicate in texture, deliciously subtle with ground hazelnuts and butter, and very, very good. Thank you for helping make my friend happy!
Hi John, I just doubled checked the measurements for this recipe and everything is correct. We follow King Arthur Flour's measurements for flour (https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/learn/ingredient-weight-chart), which is 120 grams per cup of flour. We weigh our ingredients with a scale, and these are the measurements we used to make the recipe. One stick (1/2 cup) of butter is 113 grams, which is the measurement labeled on each stick of butter, for 226 grams total (you can see the measurements printed on the labels in the ingredient photo above).
Hello, I made these a couple weeks ago and they were very good. Similar to so many of the pecan crescents we have make every year at Christmas. This one was a nice slight change. A keeper. TU Pat
Can the dough be made ahead and frozen?
Yes, cookie dough can be frozen for up to 3 months!
I have a question. Can I use almond meal or the other nut meals that are available?
Hi Judy, yes you can! Walnuts and hazelnuts are also a great choice.