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Almond Horseshoes
1 1/2 cups almonds 2/3 cup shortening 1/2 cup sugar 1 1/3 cups flour 1 teaspoon vanilla powdered sugar Blanch the almonds, let them dry over night and then grate or chop them very fine. Cream the shortening and the sugar, add flour, almonds and vanilla and work lightly with the fingers until well mixed. Shape the dough with the hands into half circles about 1/2 inch thick and bake in a slow oven (350 degrees F.) for 25 minutes. Before the cookies are entirely cooled, roll them in powdered sugar. Recipe makes one and a half dozen.
A short, eggless almond shortbread of the Central European crescent type, made stiff enough to shape by hand. The dough is dry by design and holds its form without leavening.
- The oven number, not the wordThe book calls 350F a "slow oven," which is really moderate by modern reckoning. Bake at 325-350F; at the higher end watch from 20 minutes, as ground almonds brown fast and the cookies should stay pale.
- Blanching and drying the almondsBlanched almonds must be thoroughly dry before grinding or they turn to paste and the dough goes greasy. Overnight on a towel is the original method; a 30-minute spell in a 200F oven, then full cooling, does the same job.
- Grate, do not grindA rotary nut grater or the grating disc of a food processor gives the dry, fluffy texture the recipe wants. A blade processor works only in short pulses; run it long and you get almond butter.
- ShorteningIn an American book of this sort, this most likely means solid vegetable shortening, though the word could also cover lard or a blended fat. Unsalted butter gives better flavour and a shorter crumb; if you use it, a pinch of salt is worth adding, since the recipe calls for none.
- Working the doughThere is no egg and no liquid, so the dough is held together by fat alone. Handle it briefly with cool fingertips until it just coheres; if it crumbles, press rather than knead, and chill 20 minutes if the kitchen is warm.
- Shaping"Half circles about 1/2 inch thick" is best read as small pieces rolled into finger-thick ropes and bent into a horseshoe; the recipe fixes only the thickness, so the length is left to you. Uniform thickness matters more than length, as thin ends scorch.
- The sugar coatingRoll them in powdered sugar while still warm, not hot. Hot cookies melt the sugar into a glaze, and cold ones will not hold it; they are also very fragile straight from the oven, so let them firm on the sheet for five minutes first.
- Yield and keepingEighteen cookies as written, which is a small batch by modern standards and doubles cleanly. They keep two weeks in a tin and improve after a day; re-dust with powdered sugar before serving.
Almond crescents of this kind travelled to American cookbooks from the Austrian and German baking tradition, where Vanillekipferl — vanilla-scented, nut-rich, eggless, and buried in powdered sugar after baking — have long been a Christmas fixture. The horseshoe or crescent shape is often said to commemorate the Ottoman siege of Vienna, though that story is folklore attached to several pastries rather than anything documented. What is clear is why the cookie earned a place under "Extra-Special Company Cakes and Cookies": a cup and a half of almonds was a genuine expense in a household of the period, and a recipe that spends its money on nuts rather than eggs or butter signals occasion baking. The use of vegetable shortening in place of butter reads as the period's own compromise, cheap fat carrying costly flavour.