Vanillas Kifli

Vanilla kifli are the holiday cookies your grandmother brought from Hungary, Austria, or somewhere along the old Habsburg empire. The name simply means “crescent," but these are sometimes also called Vanillekipferl in Austria and Germany.

No leavening, no eggs whites, no liquid beyond the yolks. The dough is essentially a French sablé worked into ropes and bent into half-moons. The high butter content and pure egg yolk give the cookies their signature shortbread-like, melt-in-the-mouth crumb.

The two-hour rest at room temperature is the move that separates good kifli from average ones. The flour fully hydrates and the butter relaxes, making the dough pliable enough to roll into thin ropes without cracking. Skip the rest and the dough crumbles when you try to bend it.

Knead the dough briefly until it just comes together, then stop. Overworking develops gluten and turns the cookies tough instead of tender.

Underbake them. The cookies should stay nearly white, with maybe a faint blush of color on the bottom. Browned kifli taste flat and lose their delicate texture.

Roll the still-warm cookies in vanilla sugar so the heat melts the sugar slightly and helps it cling. Cold cookies shed sugar.

Pro Tips

• Make your own vanilla sugar by burying a split vanilla bean in a jar of sugar for a week. The flavor is far better than store-bought.
• Use ground walnuts or almonds in place of ½ cup flour for the most traditional Hungarian version. Nuts deepen the flavor and add tenderness.
• Cool on the cookie sheet for the full 5 minutes. These are fragile when hot and will break the moment you lift them too early.
• Store between layers of waxed paper in a tin. Vanilla sugar gets absorbed if cookies touch each other.

Variations

• Add 1 cup finely ground walnuts, pecans, or almonds to the dough for a nuttier traditional version.
• Skip the chocolate dip and roll fully in vanilla powdered sugar.
• Add ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon to the vanilla sugar coating.