With the Holidays just around the corner, you might still need a last-minute Christmas present.
Images by: Charline Wo
Vegan Christmas Cookies
By: Charline Wolf
December 15th 2021
With the Holidays just around the corner, you might still need a last-minute Christmas present. Or maybe, you want to bring your festive spirits up a little. Either way, we’ve got you. Here is a recipe for Vegan Cinnamon Star Cookies (Zimtsterne):
Ingredients
(for approximately 30 cookies):
100 g powdered sugar
10 g cinnamon
150 g ground almonds
200 g ground hazelnuts
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
50 ml cold water
For the icing:
150 g powdered sugar
Some plant-based milk
Baking cookies for Christmas time is a tradition in German-speaking countries that many families partake in around late November or early December. That way, you have sweets to indulge in over the entire month of December, and can raise your Christmas spirits every now and then. There are many variants of popular cookies, many of which contain traditional winter-spices, such as cinnamon, as well as nuts and almonds.
Instructions
1. Preheat the oven to 180° C.
2. Sift the powdered sugar into a big bowl (if you don’t have a sieve, don’t worry: you can just skip the sifting). Add cinnamon, ground hazelnuts and almonds. We could not find ground almonds and used chopped almonds instead, which worked out just fine, but ground almonds are preferred.
3. Mix well, then add lemon juice and water and knead until it reaches a doughy consistency.
4. Roll out the dough between two baking sheets until it is about 5 mm thick. Use a cookie cutter to cut out cookies. If you used chopped instead of ground almonds, this might be a little harder, as you need to cut through or around the bigger pieces of almond.
[Tip: Traditionally, you would cut these cookies into star shapes, but any shape works. If you don’t own a cookie cutter, you can either become creative and cut out shapes with a knife, or use the rim of a glass to cut out circle shapes.]
5. Lay out a baking sheet on a baking tray and place the cookies on it. Bake them for 6-8 minutes at 180° C. They should barely brown and remain rather soft. Take the cookies out of the oven and leave them on the tray until they are completely cooled down.
6. Once the cookies are cold, prepare the icing. Mix powdered sugar with plant-based milk of your choice. The icing should remain rather thick in texture. Spread the icing on the cooled cookies and let it dry. This may take a couple of hours.
7. Enjoy your home-baked cookies, or gift them to your friends and relatives!
