December 7.
The other day Christian came home and said that he loved vanilla wreaths. In this month that means that I will find a recipe and start experimenting.
So here’s a recipe that is based on an old Danish recipe for vanilla wreaths. It is taken from an old Danish cookbook: The Madam Mangor cookbook” dated 1866, edited a bit by me.
It is one of those recipes that can adjust time and place.
If the vanilla wreaths are made with whole almonds, they look very rustic and hippie-like.
If they are made with almond meal/flour and you use a meat grinder with a special vanilla wreath tool on, they look fine and traditional and everyone can eat them.
We have a mincer that fits a well-functioning Kitchenaid – and mine isn’t. So I made the hippy version. It still makes crisp, rustic vanilla wreaths with that tasty real vanilla flavour and they are filled with crunchy almonds.
If you – as I sometimes do – forget to take the butter out of the fridge in time – the trick from Pinterest doesn’t work with Danish butter – our butter packages are simply too large.
The trick is to pour boiling water in a large glass, the water warms up the glass, the empty glass is placed over the butter. After 5-10 min butter supposedly is room temperature. I used one of the large cafe glasses and tried to cut my butter to size. Where the glass touched the butter the butter melted and the rest remained cold.
The trick I use is to heat the butter for 10 seconds in the micro oven maybe a couple of times until the butter feels soft AND before it melts.
Hmm, maybe the trick works with a glass bowl – or maybe I’m just impatient!
| Prep Time | 30 minutes |
| Cook Time | 15 minutes |
| Servings |
persons
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- 140 g chopped toasted almonds (Or almond meal/flour, if you are not into the rustic)
- 250 g wheat flour
- 1 egg
- 150 g salted butter room temperature
- 125 g sugar
- ½ vanilla pod all of it
Ingredients
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|
- The almonds are roasted in the oven at 150 ° C for about 10 minutes. Place them on baking paper on a cookie sheet. Watch them - when they are golden they are done. Cool them down and chop finely. It is important that the almonds are cool before they are added to the dough. Otherwise, the dough gets too soft to work with.
- Blend the vanilla pod with a little sugar until you have fine homemade vanilla sugar. Mix vanilla sugar with the rest of the sugar.
- Flour, eggs, butter, vanilla sugar and almonds are mixed well, until the dough no longer sticks to the hands. If the almonds have been too hot when added to the dough, and the dough is too soft to work with, put the dough in the refrigerator until it is firmer.
- Roll the dough into a thick sausage shape. Cut the dough into small pieces, roll them and make small wreaths with a large hole in.
- If you want classic looking vanilla wreaths you have to use a special tool for you meatgrinder.
- Bake the vanilla wreaths light golden brown at 160 ° C hot fan oven for about 15 minutes, watch them.
- Store the cookies in an airtight container.
You will find a print friendly version of “Old-fashioned homemade vanilla wreaths” here
