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Cinnamon Star Cookies
5 egg whites, beaten stiff 1 1/4 lbs. shelled unblanched almonds 2 cups sugar 1 lemon, grated rind and juice 1 tablespoon cinnamon To the egg whites, add sugar and beat 25 minutes. Grind the almonds fine and add sugar to eggs. Mix in other ingredients and stand in cool place for 12 hours, uncovered. Do not place in refrigerator. Sprinkle equal parts of flour and sugar on board and roll dough 1/2 in. thick. Cut with star cutter. Bake in hot oven (400 degrees F.) for 10 minutes. Cool in pan. Ice with powdered sugar and lemon juice. Makes 1 doz. cookies.
This is a Zimtsterne dough: ground almonds bound with meringue, no flour and no fat. The 12-hour uncovered rest is not optional slack time, it is what dries the surface so the stars keep their points.
- Beat the meringue properly"Beat 25 minutes" assumes a hand whisk or a slow hand-cranked beater. In a stand mixer, whip the whites to stiff peaks, then add the sugar gradually and run on medium-high 8 to 10 minutes until the meringue is glossy and no longer feels gritty between the fingers.
- Unblanched almondsSkin-on almonds, ground fine, give the flecked brown crumb this cookie is meant to have. Most store-bought almond flour is blanched and will produce a paler, softer cookie; grind whole almonds with a little of the sugar to keep them from turning to paste.
- There is no flour in the doughThe only flour in the recipe is on the rolling board. The dough is ground almonds, sugar and meringue, which is why it stays sticky and why it must be rolled on a sugar-and-flour dusting rather than flour alone.
- The 12-hour restLeaving the mixture uncovered at cool room temperature lets surface moisture evaporate and firms the almond paste. The recipe rules out the refrigerator without saying why; the likely reason is that cold, damp air keeps the dough slack and makes the cut stars spread.
- Oven400F is right, but these are meringue-based and colour fast. Ten minutes is the outer limit; pull them when the surface is set and dry and the edges are just barely tinged. They should stay chewy inside.
- Cool in the panWarm zimtsterne tear if lifted. Let them set on the sheet until firm, then move them.
- The icingPowdered sugar stirred with lemon juice to a thick, barely pourable glaze, brushed thinly over the cooled stars. It dries matte and white in an hour or so at room temperature.
- YieldA dozen cookies from over a pound of almonds and two cups of sugar is far too few. Rolled a half inch thick and cut with a star cutter of ordinary size, this quantity of dough gives several dozen; plan on baking in batches.
These are Zimtsterne, cinnamon stars, a South German and Swiss Christmas cookie generally traced to the baking traditions of Swabia and the upper Rhine, where flourless almond-and-egg-white doughs were the prestige end of holiday baking. The type is old: ground almonds and sugar were the basis of the medieval confectioner's marzipan, and the cinnamon and lemon rind mark it as a spice-trade luxury baked once a year. American cookbooks of the interwar decades printed such recipes as part of a broad enthusiasm for continental holiday sweets, sometimes under an English translation of the name rather than the German.