How to make Zimtsterne (Cinnamon Stars), Easy, Traditional German Christmas Cookies
Zimtsterne, or cinnamon stars, are delicious traditional German Christmas cookies with nut meal and cinnamon & a must-have on a cookie plate!
Equipment
- Large bowl
- Scale optional but helpful
- Rolling Pin
- Rotary hand grinder, blender, food processor or coffee grinder.
- Star-shaped cookie cutter
- Baking sheet
- Parchment paper
Ingredients
- 250 g unblanched almonds or almond flour, maybe more (about 2½-3 cups) - This depends on the size of your eggs, and how much frosting you set aside. You'll need some extra ground nuts for rolling out the dough too.
- 100 g organic powder sugar or finely ground evaporated cane juice crystals (about ½ cup plus 2 tbsp) - or use panela sugar or coconut sugar. (My original recipe calls for 250g powdered sugar, or 1 ¼ cup)
- 3 large egg whites - separate whites from yolks when cold and whip the whites after they warm up. Keep them clean! Put the yolks into the fridge for another recipe.
- 2 Tbsp Ceylon cinnamon
Optional add ons (I like to use them all!)
- ½ tsp lemon zest or ½ tsp lemon paste - if you have lemon paste, add a dash of the fermented juice to your egg whites, instead of salt.
- 1 tsp almond extract - for an enhanced almond flavor, but totally optional. My Mom would actually use a bitter almond or two that we would grind up with the sweet ones.
- 1 tsp vanilla - Germans use vanilla sugar, but the extract is just fine to use instead or the scrapings of a vanilla bean.
- pinch salt - For a more rounded flavor. A lot of original German recipes don't add salt to cookies.
Instructions
- Cover your baking sheet with a piece of parchment
- Separate the eggs and drop the cold egg whites into a large bowl and let them come to room temperature if possible. Be sure to not get any egg yolk into it or they won't whip up stiff. Put the yolks into a small sealable container and keep them refrigerated for another recipe.
- Add the pinch of salt or lemon paste juice.
- Beat the whites for 5 minutes or till you get stiff peaks that you can cut cleanly with a knife.
- Add the sugar one spoonful at a time and keep beating till it's all incorporated. Beat till it's nicely smooth, and shiny.
- Take out a heaped half cup of the fluff and set aside to use for a topping later.
- Mix the cinnamon, almond extract, lemon zest, and vanilla into the whites just briefly if using.
- Dump the almond meal into the remaining egg white fluff and fold in till just incorporated. Don't overmix, you'll want this to remain a bit fluffy. It will be sticky. If it's too sticky or pasty, add a little more almond meal.
- You can refrigerate the dough at this point for a couple of hours or overnight. I don't do that most of the time, but it does help to make it a little easier to get your cutouts.
- Sprinkle a little of the almond meal onto a piece of parchment. Place the dough on top, and sprinkle with some more almond meal. Place another piece of parchment over it. Roll out between the two sheets of parchment into a ¼ inch to ⅓ inch thick disk.
- Thicken any thinned edges with your fingers or a knife, by pushing them back into the dough a bit until the piece is equally thick. .
- Cut out as many stars as possible, dipping your cutter into the almond meal, powdered sugar, or water between cuts. Clean the star tips occasionally to keep your stars from getting blunt tips or breaking after a few cuts.
- Place the stars fairly close on your cookie sheet.
- When you're done distribute the retained topping among all the cookies, and, with a silicone brush, toothpick, spoon, or knife, spread the frosting to cover the cookies evenly. Push the frosting toward each star tip and then pull back on it to get a nice point.
- Bake them at a low temperature (275-300℉) in the lower third of your oven, for about 20-30 minutes. They should remain soft and the frosting should remain fairly white or barely golden tinged. Turn off the oven, but keep the cookie sheet in the oven with the door propped open for a few more minutes to keep drying them.
- When done, transfer the cookies carefully to a cooling rack. Once cooled, they can be kept in a cookie tin or other air tight container.
Storage
- Store your cookies for up to 4 weeks at room temperature in an airtight container. I don't recommend freezing them because the meringue would get soft and gooey.
- To keep your cookies soft longer, you can add a slice of apple or bread. Do replace that apple or bread every so often to keep it from getting moldy.
Notes
Tips For Making The Best Zimtsterne And Substitutions
- Whipping your egg whites with room-temperature eggs works best, but they separate easier when cold. For that reason I like to separate them cold before getting all the other ingredients ready. Then I whip the whites later, after they warm up a little. Keep the yolks for another recipe in the refrigerator.
- Try your best not to get any fat or egg yolk into the egg whites or they won't get stiff. Be sure to use a fresh bowl and clean beaters!
- Beat the whites until you get peaks and you can get a clean cut when cutting with a knife. Then add the sugar by the spoonful, whip to incorporate and do that until most of the sugar is incorporated the rest can be dumped in at once. Keep whipping till you have a nice shiny, creamy, fluffy and smooth meringue batter.
- If you're grinding your own nuts, you'll want to turn them into a meal. Be sure you don't turn them into nut butter. If you grind with a hand mill, they may not be fine enough for perfect cutouts. I used them straight from the grater for my first batch and they were hard to cut out and turned out shaggy and with lots of bits to chew. In my later batches I gave those ground almonds a quick whirl in the coffee grinder after hand grinding, which yielded a nice meal.
- It's best to grind your own nuts to avoid rancidity. If you purchase the meal, be sure to store it in a cool place and use it as soon as possible, or store the package in the fridge or freezer. I could not find any organic ground almonds that have not been blanched first, another reason that I grind my own from organic whole almonds, which are fairly easy to get.
- Keep extra ground nuts handy. Roll your dough out on a thin layer of ground nuts to keep it from sticking and dip your cookie cutter into the nut flour or some powdered sugar between uses. Clean out the star tips on the cutter after a few cuts or you'll end up with blunt tips and broken stars. Rinse with cold water if necessary.
- At the end you might be left with some dough that has become too dry to shape properly due to extra nuts getting mixed in during rolling. Just form that into a round cookie or two and bake alongside the nice ones for a 'tester' treat later.
- The recipe is for one half sheet full of cookies. They can be baked fairly close as they don't run. If you want two sheets, just double the ingredients. If you go by weight, these are so easy to scale.
- Make your cookies healthier by using ground panela sugar, maple sugar, or coconut sugar, however, you won't get that white frosting this way. It will be golden or honey colored or even brown. Here is what I suggest, in case aesthetics are important (when it comes to cinnamon stars, to me it is! 😁). Make the egg white batter for the cinnamon stars with ground panela or coconut sugar and the topping separately with some organic powdered sugar. You'll get a healthier version and they still look like traditional cinnamon stars.
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How To Make Separate Frosting:
Here is the recipe for just the frosting made separately: whip 1 egg white till super stiff. Beat in 50-100g of powdered sugar, one spoonful at a time. Adjust the amount of sugar to your preference. I used 50g of organic powdered sugar on my first round of healthy panela cinnamon stars, and it looks a bit gritty. Next I used 100g which made a pretty and shiny frosting. They both taste delicious, but for aesthetics the 100g of powder sugar with 1 beaten egg white wins.