Downsizing

If you live in Austria, you'll probably have eaten more Christmas cookies than you intended to at this stage. Most people's favourite are Vanillekipferln and most people try to make them as tiny and melt-in-your-mouth-able as possible. I am no exception. Can you guess which of the above I made? Yep, the one on the right. The other one was made by a (Japanese) friend of mine and was exceptionally big. I can definitely see the temptation of making bigger crescents as Vanillekipferln are among the most time-consuming beasts of all the traditional cookies. In order to finish 3 baking sheets worth of Kipferln, I worked through an episode of Desperate Housewives and 1.5 of Mad Men, a DVD set I wisely purchased before the baking season.

Why is it important to make tiny crescents then apart from them being more aestheticically pleasing? Well, Vanillekipferln are basically made of butter, nuts (there are different family recipes and heated discussions, I use roasted hazelnuts only) and sugar and even if most people end up eating 5 VK one after the other, it makes them feel better and less piggish if they eat several smaller ones than 1 or two giant ones. Personally, I also think small cookies taste better than huge ones, unless it's gingerbread which I quite like being big.

In case you get tempted, here's a link to my family recipe. Good luck!