Almond Crescent Cookies
Buttery almond crescents shaped by hand, baked for 15 minutes and rolled twice in icing sugar while still warm.
Photograph credit: Vanillekipferl-Nahaufnahme by Schlurcher · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
This is what to bake in the first cold week of December, when the shops are playing carols and the kitchen needs something small and sweet for the tin. Almond crescents belong to the Central European tradition of vanilla crescents, a delicate butter cookie that dissolves in the mouth.
The dough is short, with a high proportion of butter to flour and a generous amount of ground almonds. There is no egg, which is why the cookies are so tender, and also why the dough is fragile. Chill it for 30 minutes before shaping, or it will stick to your hands and lose its shape in the oven.
Roll into a small log and bend into a crescent. Pieces about the size of a walnut, rolled under the palm into a short sausage with tapered ends and curved gently, bake into the classic shape. Place them on a lined tray with a little room between them.
Bake until the bottoms are pale gold and the tops are still pale, then dust them with icing sugar while they are warm so the first layer melts in. Wait 10 minutes and roll them a second time in more sugar once cool for a thick, snowy coat.
What People Ask
How long does Almond Crescent Cookies take to make?
30 minutes of preparation and 15 minutes of cooking, plus 30 minutes of chilling, so allow 1 hour 15 minutes from start to finish. The method also needs time for cooling, which it does not time, so treat that as a minimum. The recipe serves 30.
How to Make Almond Crescent Cookies
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Beat the butter and 80 g of the icing sugar for 2 minutes until pale. Beat in the vanilla.
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Stir in the flour, ground almonds and salt to form a soft dough. Chill for 30 minutes.
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Heat the oven to 170°C / 340°F and line 2 trays. Shape pieces of dough into 30 small crescents.
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Bake for 15 minutes until the bottoms are pale gold.
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Roll the warm cookies in half the remaining icing sugar. Cool, then roll again in the rest.
Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.
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Worth Getting Right
- Chill the dough before shaping.
- Roll in sugar twice for a snowy coat.
- Handle the baked cookies gently: they are fragile.
Serve It With
Hot chocolate · Mulled wine · Black tea · Coffee
Leftovers and Storage
Keeps in an airtight tin for 2 weeks.
What's in a Serving
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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