These tasty almond and vanilla cookies are a real Christmas classic in the Danish kitchen.
I had, however, never baked them myself, until now. The wreaths are traditionally made by squeezing the dough through a meat grinder, and since we don’t own a meat grinder, I thought I couldn’t’ make them!
Luckily, you can make them with the help of a piping bag and a star nozzle. And good that I tried, cause homemade vanilla wreaths are way better than the store bought ones. In addition, my kids thought it was great fun to squeeze wreaths (and all kinds of other interesting shapes) out of the bag.
Though our wreaths might not be the prettiest, the taste was heavenly, so if you have strength and patience to squeeze a bit more, then double this recipe!
Ingredients:
(Makes about 40 cookies)
1 vanilla bean (or 1 tsp vanilla sugar)
100g room tempered butter
1 dl sugar
1 egg
1.5 dl wheat flour
2 dl almond flour (buy ready-made or blend skinless almonds yourself)
Directions:
Take the butter out of the fridge to soften. Put on the oven on 200C (for a normal oven, 175C for a convection oven)).
Split the vanilla bean and scrape the seeds out on a cutting board. Pour a tablespoon of sugar on top and mix until the vanilla seeds are well mixed and separated into the sugar.
Mix vanilla, the rest of the sugar, almond flour and softened butter (if the butter isn’t soft enough, you can heat it a bit in the microwave, but be careful not to melt it!). Add the egg and the wheat flour. You just need to gather the dough, no need for kneading.
Pour the dough into a piping bag with a star nozzle and pipe wreaths out on a baking tray lined with baking paper.
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If you have little helpers other shapes might appear too...
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Bake at 200C until the wreaths are slightly golden. This will take about 7 - 12 minutes. Watch out that they don’t get too dark. Danish vanilla wreaths are supposed to be pretty pale. I personally think they are pretty good, when they get a bit more colour, so I bake some more and some less, then there is something for every taste!
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The cookies need to cool before they get crispy, so you’ll have to wait a little before tasting.
When they have cooled, the feast can start!
If there are any left, keep them in a biscuit tin.
