Two Austrian Christmas Cookies Recipes You'll Love

The Christmas season is almost upon us. It is time to unpack the fluffy jackets, start knitting scarfs and stand huddled up on the train station while suppressing a slight shiver. The best of all is that Cookie Season starts as well! This means standing in the kitchen and baking nice lovely cookies until your family and you are about to explode.

This also gives me a great opportunity to share my favourite cookie recipes. Since I am an Austrian country girl all of them are Austrian as well, but no matter, as we all know Austrian pastry and cookies are among the best of the world ... she wrote being non-biased.

All of these recipes are really simple, don't take up much time, and you won't need a lot of tools - or even skill.

Vanillekipferl

Vanillekipferl - or literally translated as vanilla croissant - are tiny croissant made out of nuts and sugar. They are generally light in taste and very addictive. Making them takes around an hour - this includes baking. The recipe is vegetarian.

What do you need?

♦ cake flour: 280g
♦ butter (no salted butter!): 200g
♦ grated walnuts: 100g
♦ powdered sugar: 80g
♦ vanilla sugar: 1 small packet
♦ additional powdered sugar to sprinkle afterwards

Two important things before you start baking: first of all, you need to make sure that the butter is no longer cold. Instead room temperature is just right. Furthermore, please use un-salted butter. Salted butter does not exist in Austria, and I can't vouch for any results when you used salted butter!

First you need to mix all the ingredients and knead the dough. Once that is done, place it in a bowl - which you cover with a kitchen towel. As an alternative, you can wrap it in plastic. This is placed into the fridge for two hours.

Then it is time to preheat the oven to 170° (hot air). Take the dough out of the fridge, and roll it out into a sausage like form. Then cut it into equally small piece - these piece will then be formed into small croissants.

In the end, place them onto the baking paper and into the oven. Voila 15 minutes later they are finished. The only think missing now is a little bit of powdered sugar to sprinkle the Vanillekipferl afterwards!

Linzer Augen 

This meal translates as Eyes of Linzer, and don't worry, it's less creepy than it sounds. In fact it a small cookie made out of shortcrust pastry filled with jam.

What do you need?

♦ cake flour: 450g
♦ butter: 300g
♦ powdered sugar: 150g
♦ egg york: 1
♦ a pinch of salt
♦ jam

Again, please use unsalted butter, furthermore begin when the butter is at room temperature. The type of jam is up to you. I have eating Linzer Augen with apricots, but also with strawberry - loved both.

Begin with mixing the flour, sugar, butter, salt and the egg york and creating a shortcrust pastry. Afterwards let the pastry rest for two hours in the fridge. While doing so, pre-heat the oven to 170°C of hot air.

Then you roll out the dough, and cut out the shapes. The traditional way would be a flower cookie cutter. However, you can let your imagination flow. Just remember to cut out an even number of cookies. Make a small hole in the middle of half of the cookies.

Then place the patch onto the baking paper and put it into the oven for about 12 minutes.

After they are baked, spread the jam onto the cookies without a hole in them. Then put others on top.

In the end, just sprinkle them with powdered sugar. Bon appetite!


Those are two of the most used Austrian cookie recipes. They're easy to make, and don't take a lot of time as well. They're my favourites and I hope you're going to enjoy them as well!