Emperor's Cookies - German Christmas Cookies

Ingredients:

3 cups (300g) flour
1 cup (125g) powdered sugar
1 package vanilla sugar
1 pinch of salt
4 egg yolks
7 tablespoons (100g) butter

Icing
Powdered sugar, vanilla sugar
Raspberry, strawberry or favorite red jam

Preparation:

Sift flour onto work surface and make a hole in the center. Put powdered sugar, vanilla sugar, salt and egg yolks inside the hole and place the butter flakes on top of it. Quickly knead ingredients to form smooth dough. Cover with kitchen towel and let chill for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350° F.

Roll out dough on a floured surface as thinly as possible. Cut out cookies with cookie cutters. If using different shapes, make sure to always cut out even numbers for each shape. Use a small round cookie cutter to make a hole in the center of half the cookies. Place cookies onto a greased cookie sheet.

Bake for 15-20 minutes at 350° F in the preheated oven.

Let them cool down. Spread jam on cookies without hole and place the other half (cookie with hole) on top. Mix the powdered sugar and the vanilla sugar and dust the cookies.

Variation

You may also use only round cookie cutters. The round version of these cookies is also known as Little Rogues (Spitzbuben).