Another year of Christmas baking is coming to a close. This year, unlike other years, I’ve made only a few choice traditional Czech Christmas cookies, Marokanky, Linzer, Gingerbread and Carpenter Curls. I made enough of each to share and to have a selection around for guests. I added the Vanilla Crescents or Vanilkove Rohlicky, ones I’ve never made before. I never appreciated their simplicity when I was a kid, but now as an adult I love their simplicity and I love the way they melt in your mouth. They are simple, easy and deliscious.
The recipe is very simple and you probably have everything in the house to make them.
Vanilla Crescents
- 1/2 lb butter, unsalted and room temp
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 2 cups flour
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 egg yolk (optional)
- 1 1/2 cups ground almonds
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- lemon zest from one lemon
- Icing sugar, 1 – 2 cups- enough to coat the cookies when they come out of the oven
Mix all ingredients together and form in to a nice dough… mix butter, sugar, vanilla, egg yolk, lemon zest and salt first, then add in the flour 1 cup at a time and mix to form a dough ball. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap or put in a zip bag and refrigerate either overnight or for a couple hours to allow it to rest a bit.
Roll the dough into a noodle about 1 inch thick and cut into 2 inch sections. Place on parchment lined baking sheet forming them into crescents making sure you give them a little room to expand. Bake at 325 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes depending on how big you’ve made them. The ends should just barely be browning when you take them out of the oven. The trick is to have them all as similar in size as possible so that they all bake the same. Before you coat them in icing sugar give them enough time of cool off so that they don’t fall apart when you pick them up but still warm enough that the sugar sticks to them.
Hope you enjoy them… Happy Holidays!
