Email from Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Hello Friends,

Please forgive the mass email, but I wanted to let you know that there are updates to my blog (online journal/pics) and invite you to "catch up with me" virtually. Things have been going well here in Austria and I have enjoyed writing about my adventures (and misadventures) in the land of waltzes! Now that December is almost here, it started snowing, there are makeshift Christmas markets all over the place (the biggest one in front of the Rathaus) with lots of homemade arts and crafts, and the Gluehwein is flowing a-plenty!

Have you ever had Vanilla Kipferl (vanilla crescents)? Here just before Advent they start making tons and tons of cookies. My old friend, Luis (cellist from Roosevelt) and his wife, Gerlinde invited me over for dinner the other night for kind of a pre-Thanksgiving meal Austrian style (roast chicken instead of turkey, roasted chestnuts instead of mashed potatoes, sweet kraut in apple seasoning, usw...) and my favorite cookie she served for dessert was the Vanilla Kipferl, which take some concentration to make since they are fairly small, delicate, and proned to breaking (Luis doesn't mind when they break, though, since he gets to eat the "rejects"). I was able to coerce the recipe - maybe you'd like to try making them:

Vanille Kipferl

Ingredients:

1 cup flour

3/4 cup butter
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/3 cup almonds, peeled and ground
2 egg yolks
1/3 cup powdered sugar
vanilla

Mix flour and butter together until it looks like breadcrumbs. Add sugar, almonds and egg yolks and knead quickly to a short pastry. Cool for 1/2 hour.

Form to a roll of the thickness of a thumb. Cut into 1 centimeter pieces. Roll each piece in your hand to a length of about 1.5 inches and give it the shape of a French croissant (but much smaller of course, and this shape is called "Kipferl").

Bake at 350 degrees for 10 - 20 minutes. They may not get any color, so don't wait until they're brown!

Mix the powdered sugar with vanilla and roll the Kipferl in the sugar mixture while they are still hot. But be careful, those Kipferl tend to break very easily.