Germany is known for its unique and delicous Christmas Bakery all over the world. Hazelnut Macaroons are easy to make, they last for weeks if kept in a cookie box at a cool place. Back in my childhood in Germany my mother would start baking weeks before Christmas and keep the cookies in an unheated room. Then finally on Christmas eve (December 24) we could eat all the delicious cookies, marzipan bars and chocolate coins but only after we had unwrapped all of our christmas gifts. And we always had Haselnuss-Makronen. Happy Baking. For more recipes visit Gabriele’s Blog: http://mybestgermanrecipes.com
Ingredients
4 eggwhite
150 g sugar
1 sachet vanilla sugar
200 g ground hazelnuts or hazelnut flour
hazelnuts cut in half for decoration
1/4 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ground lemon peel
2 tbsp flour for dusting
about 30 wafers( very thin round pieces of unleavened bread) – Find the baking wafers here at German Deli
How you’ll make it
– Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.
– Beat egg white with a pinch of salt very firm (so firm that if you cut it with the knife you would see the cut!).
– Add sugar with vanilla sugar, and sieve it over the firm eggwhite; carefully mix it.
– Then add the hazelnuts, cinnamon and lemon peel, and mix it again. If you cannot get ground hazelnuts or hazelnut flour, you can use a coffee grinder to grind them.
– Dust a baking tray with flour or lay it out with parchment paper.
– Place on each wafer with 2 teaspoons a small amount of hazelnut batter, and place in the middle of it one half of a hazelnut (if you place too much batter on the wafer, the cookie will get too big and flow over the wafer).
– Bake them for 10-15 minutes, depending on the oven. Check frequently, you don’t want the wafers become brown.
If you like you can bake them also without the wafers, and dip the bottom of the macaroons in melted dark chocolate, or just leave it plain.