Bake? Me?! Not In A Million Years!!! …Frankenkipferl, Anyone?

I EAT baked goods not MAKE them. Everybody knows this. And I stick to my principles.

But my resolve buckled on Saturday, when my friend Lorena asked if I wanted to come over to make Vanillekipferl with her. Those are one of the many kinds of traditional German Christmas biscuits referred to as Plätzchen, and it is every German female’s patriotic duty to churn out 100 trays of them between December 1st and Christmas Eve. If you fail to do this, and, God forbid, you are a mother, your children will be taken away from you.

Anyway, back to the story. I’ve never made Plätzchen in my life, except, of course, with my mother when I was little, and the irony of being roped into this quintessentially Teutonic seasonal pursuit by a Spanish friend wasn’t lost on me.

Enough butter for a quick heart attack before dinner…? Flour, sugar and ground almonds are all that’s needed besides.

Lined up like little soldiers, ready for the oven…

Now, just to show you what the finished article is meant to look like:

And this is how our long-laboured-over creations emerged from the oven:

Oooops… more like steamrollered slugs than kipferl … but hey, it’s not like I didn’t warn Lorena about my Medusa’s touch with anything kitchen-related

A generous shovelful of vanilla sugar helped a great deal to hide our mutants’ imperfections… almost appetising, you have to admit!

Never mind aesthetics, on the taste front, they were a 10 out of 10 🙂