These tasty little gems from last year’s Cookiemas were the result of several happy accidents – meaning, something that happens when my brain ceases to function.. For Aubrey’s school, we needed to prepare a dish for the International Feast. Since it was Cookiemas, we were naturally going to bring cookies. We signed up for Italy and proceeded to look for an Italian cookie. We picked these. The day before the feast, we realized Vienna is in Austria – oops. Luckily, they let us switch.
The second brain failure occurred with this little lapse in judgment. The recipe calls for ground hazelnuts. Since I couldn’t find ground hazelnuts, I bought diced hazelnuts. I have a Magic Bullet, I’ll put the hazelnuts in there to grind them, right? Wrong!
Hazelnuts + Magic Bullet = Hazelnut Butter
Luckily the resulting cookie was delicious. Buttery, flaky and full of hazelnut flavor. The below recipe calls for hazelnut butter because I wouldn’t attempt these any other way.
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Viennese Crescent Cookies – yields 4 dozen
2 c all-purpose flour
1 c butter
½ c to ¾ c hazelnut butter (put 2 c chopped hazelnuts in your food processor and hit go. It’ll be close enough)
½ c sifted powdered sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 c sifted confectioners sugar
Preheat oven to 375º F. In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, butter, nut butter, ½ c powdered sugar, salt and vanilla. Mix until thoroughly blended. Shape dough into a ball. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.
Remove dough from refrigerator and form 1 inch balls. Roll each ball into a small roll, 3 inches long. Place rolls 2” apart on an ungreased cookie sheet, and bend each one to make a crescent shape.
Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until set but not brown.
Let stand 1 minute and then remove from cookie sheets. Place hot cookies on a large sheet of aluminum foil. Sprinkle with remaining powdered sugar. Turn gently to coat both sides. Cool completely and store in an airtight container at room temperature.
[...] The Twelfth Day of Cookiemas For the twelfth day of Cookiemas, I was back from Texas and we made the Viennese Crescent Cookies. [...]