Swiss Walnut Christmas Cookies
Serves: 30 to 50 cookies
Baumnuss Guetzli are traditional Swiss Christmas cookies made from walnuts, and which are soft and chewy. A delicious and gluten-free cookie recipe to make during the holiday season.
Ingredients
For the cookies
- 2 egg whites
- 1 pinch fine salt
- 225 g (8 oz) ground walnuts
- 150 g (1 cup plus 2 tablespoons) ground hazelnuts
- 200 g (⅔ cup plus ¼ cup) caster sugar, (superfine sugar)
For the glaze
- 150 g (1 cup plus 1 tablespoon) icing sugar, (powdered sugar)
- 1 ½ tablespoon water
- 1 ½ teaspoon Kirsch
- walnuts, to decorate
Instructions
To Make the Cookies
- Whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until they are stiff.
- If ground walnuts are not available where you live, simply place the same weight of whole walnuts in the food processor and blitz until they are finely processed.
- Add the ground walnuts, ground hazelnuts and sugar to the egg whites.
- Mix everything together to form a sticky dough.
- Roll the dough out between two sheets of baking paper until it is about 1 cm thick.
- Use a cookie cutter of your choice (e.g. flower, Christmas tree, star) and cut out your shapes, re-rolling the mixture as needed. As the dough is fairly moist and sticky, you might need to use a palette knife or spatula to lift the cookie shapes.
- Place the shapes on a sheet of baking paper and leave them to dry for about 6 hours or overnight.
To Bake the Cookies
- Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F (without fan).
- Bake the cookies for about 10-12 minutes, until they are lightly browned.
- Cool the cookies on a wire rack.
To Decorate the Cookies
- Make the glaze by whisking together the icing sugar (powdered sugar), water and Kirsch.
- Gently dip one side of the cookies into the icing mixture and let any excess icing drip off.
- Place the iced cookies on a wire rack and decorate with a walnut halve.
Kitchen Notes
- VARIATIONS
As a slight variation, you can also use ground almonds in place of the ground walnuts and ground hazelnuts. - RECIPE CREDIT
This recipe is adapted from Betty Bossi. - OVEN TEMPERATURES
All recipes on this website state temperatures for a regular oven (i.e. a conventional oven without fan). If you have a convection oven with a fan, please consult the manufacturer's handbook on how to adjust the temperature and baking time accordingly. - CONVERSIONS
To convert from cups to grams, and vice-versa, please see this handy Conversion Chart for Basic Ingredients.