Zimtsterne (Cinnamon Stars), Easy 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!

German Zimtsterne, or cinnamon stars, are fantastic chewy cookies made entirely with nut meal, no flour at all. We always used ground almonds for these, but they are often made with hazelnut meal. A generous helping of cinnamon adds the seasoning they are named after and they are held together with a sweet meringue fluff. I’m providing a healthier version here but there are notes on how to make my family’s traditional recipe.

These are so easy and quick to make. The only thing that takes a bit of time is adding the frosting. But if you employ your kids, that part should be quick work too. They’ll love it! But you might want to make a little extra meringue for the finger licking part. So, lets whip up a batch, shall we?!

I’ve posted another essential German Christmas cookie recipe recently that partner well with Zimtsterne: try these traditional Vanillekipferl or Vanilla Crescents! If you are a fan of healthy Holiday treats, you’ll love my Spicy Lemon & Honey Tahini Cookies, and you must try these Apple Pie Cheesecake Bars. For breakfast or dessert try the fabulous Ginger Spice Apple Crisp With Cranberries, and Pumpkin Cake with Apple & Ginger Streusel or Sourdough Pumpkin Apple Muffins! And if you’re looking for a guilt-free dessert indulgence be sure to make some Lemon Cheesecake Mousse.

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Zimtsterne, or Cinnamon Stars, A German Christmas Cookie Tradition

Christmas without Zimtsterne? Unthinkable in Germany! These cookies are as traditional as you can get. You will find Zimtsterne in every store around Christmas time and most certainly at the Christmas markets.

Zimtsterne reportedly originated in 1536 when the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was served these at a banquet. At least that is the first record we seem to have. Back then, cinnamon was reserved for royalty and the well-off and didn’t become mainstream till later in the 1800s, when cinnamon became affordable and then the recipe for cinnamon stars also started to appear in German cookbooks.

My Mama made these each year as part of at least a dozen varieties for her cookie platters that she served to family and friends who visited during Advent time. And they appeared in gift tins for teachers, neighbors, and her favorite delivery person.

Christmas baking was, and probably still is, a serious affair and I happily carried on the tradition when I moved to America. My German cookies were much appreciated and praised by many when I gifted them during the Advent season, and the kids were most happy to have lots of varieties to pick from and to help with the cookie baking and decorating. 

This is a healthier version of these traditional cookies because I feel better when I can eat treats that don’t wreck my healthy eating goals. However, I hate to miss out on some of the traditions that I grew up with. These zimtsterne taste really delicious either way, and when you bake up my low sugar version, I doubt that you’ll miss the sugar, they are still plenty sweet and have a more wholesome flavor.

If you love to try new Christmas cookie recipes, do check out my Vanillekipferl too, those half moons look awesome on a platter with cinnamon stars. I hope to post more cookies eventually, stay tuned and get on my mailing list for updates and notifications of new recipes.  

Why You’ll Love This Zimtsterne Recipe

• Cinnamon stars are so delicious! They sound super simple, but they have a great complex flavor with a super pleasing chewy texture and a delicate crunchy meringue top. 

• They are great to make ahead. If you wait a few days before eating them the flavor actually improves. 

• Cinnamon stars can be stored for 3-4 weeks in a cookie tin. 

• True cinnamon, or Ceylon cinnamon, is a great antioxidant spice that I like to include often and generously in recipes for its benefits. This recipe uses a good amount of it. 

• These cookies use nutritious whole nuts with the skin, ground to a coarse or fine meal. Some recipes call for blanched nuts, but I don’t think that I ever had them with blanched nuts, so I can’t recommend that. Whole nuts, are packed with nutrition and protein, which can contribute to better health, especially if you use previously soaked or sprouted nuts. I didn’t in this recipe, but doing so improves the nutrient value.  

• This recipe has mostly healthy ingredients. And while it contains sugar, I’ve cut the sugar down quite a bit, which does not hurt the flavor, but helps to lower your glycemic marker. Something I find important. Using unrefined sugar adds valuable minerals too and can be digested more easily.

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.

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, shiny frosting. They both taste delicious, but for aesthetics the 100g of powder sugar with 1 beaten egg white wins.

How to make Zimtsterne

Equipment

Large Bowl – This one is for mixing your dough.

Rotary grater, blender, coffee/spice grinder, or food processor – For grinding your own nuts! I used a Geedel rotary cheese grinder with the fine attachment. It works great, but the nuts were a little on the coarse side in my first batch, which made it harder to cut out the stars and they looked a little ‘shaggy’. However, I love the extra bite you get with those and didn’t mind the coarseness at all, but a slightly finer grind is preferable.

On the second batch I grated them on the Geedel first and then gave them a whirl in my coffee grinder to process them just a little more, which made a fairly fine meal, and it made much prettier stars. I suppose preference will vary, but I recommend to grind the nuts on the fine disk of a rotary mill first and giving it just a very brief whirl in the coffee grinder for the best texture. If you have a high speed blender you can try that, just try to avoid making nut butter. Alternatively you could purchase a coarse or fine unblanched almond meal.

Rolling pin

Star-shaped cookie cutter

Parchment paper – I used two sheets of parchment for rolling the dough. It’s so much easier that way, and then I like to line the baking sheet with parchment too. This could be reused several times, just wipe the crumbs off. You could also use a silicone baking mat.

Baking sheet – You should be able to fit all the cookies on one half-sheet if you don’t roll the dough too thin.

Ingredients

Unblanched almonds or almond meal – I couldn’t find any organic and unblanched on Amazon, so this link is for Azure standard, a buyer’s club that delivers by truck to drops around the country. I ground my own organic whole almonds into a meal and I prefer the texture of them over using a fine almond flour.

Powdered sugar – My original recipe calls for regular powdered sugar, but instead I like to grind my own organic, panela sugar (sucanat), or the less refined evaporated cane juice crystals to avoid GMOs and additives and because they are healthier. You could also use coconut sugar.

If aesthetics matter, you can first whip up your cookie dough with panela sugar but then use the finely ground evaporated cane juice or purchase organic powder sugar for the frosting and make it separately. Instructions for making a separate frosting are in the tips and substitutions.

Eggs – If I had to purchase eggs, I’d give those from organic, pasture raised chickens preference.

Delicious, Convenient Lemon Paste From Fermented Preserved Lemons (Lemon Confit). About a year old.

Lemon zest or lemon paste – Optional. I used fermented lemon paste, it is what I have on hand and it’s convenient to use in all my baking. No need to make lemon zest every time or keeping lemons on hand that often go moldy before I get to use them. If you’d like to make your own lemon paste, I can tell you that it’s really easy to do and it lasts for a year or more in the fridge, always ready to use! If you use lemon zest, try to get organic, unsprayed lemons or wash and brush them really well, they get a lot of toxic treatments, which I would want to avoid.

Cinnamon – I recommend Ceylon cinnamon, which has great health benefits and it is low in coumarin. The cheaper and more common Cassia (Korintje) cinnamon, on the other hand, is not safe to take in high doses, or often. That’s because of its high coumarin content, a potentially toxic compound which can damage the liver. (more info)

Almond extract – Optional, use it if you like that bitter almond flavor.

Vanilla – Optional. Some use it, some don’t. In Germany we used vanilla sugar, but I use the extract here when I don’t have any vanilla sugar in my pantry. You can also use the scrapings from a vanilla bean, or vanilla paste.

Salt – Optional. I include a pinch, but feel free to leave it out. A lot of my original German cookie recipes do not include salt, but I like how it rounds the flavors.

Instructions For Making Zimtsterne

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 keep out any egg yolk, use a clean bowl and clean beaters. (Save the yolks for another project)

Add the pinch of salt.

Beat the whites for 5-10 minutes or till you get stiff peaks that you can cut it with a knife. 

Add the sugar one spoonful at a time and keep beating till it’s all incorporated, creamy, and shiny. Much like fluff. 

Take out a heaping 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 stiff whites just briefly if using. 

Dump the almond meal into the remaining egg white fluff

Fold the almonds into the fluff till just incorporated. Don’t overmix, you’ll want this to remain a bit lofty.

Sprinkle a little of the extra almond meal onto a piece of parchment, place the dough on it and cover with another sprinkle of almond meal and another piece of parchment.

Roll out into a ¼ – ⅓ inch thick disk. 

Thicken any thinned edges to equal the middle by pressing it back into the dough disk with your fingers or a knife.

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 the cutout stars from sticking and getting blunt tips after a few cuts. You can chill the dough for a while before you start to make the cutting out part easier.

Place the stars fairly close together on your cookie sheets. 

Preheat your oven to 275 – 300 degrees before you frost the stars.

When you’re done distribute the retained topping among all the cookies

With a pastry brush, silicone brush, toothpick, spoon, or knife, spread the frosting to cover the cookies evenly. 

You can now leave the cookies to dry at room temperature for a while, or bake them now.

Bake the Zimtsterne in the lower part of the oven at a low temperature (275-300℉). They should remain soft and the frosting should stay white or just start to get a bit golden, but barely. Turn off the oven, but keep the cookie sheet in the oven with the door propped open for a few more minutes. 

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 for up to 4 weeks.

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 inside the tin, add a slice of apple or bread. Do replace that apple every so often to keep it from getting moldy. 

Your Questions Answered

Enjoy Your Delicious Zimtsterne – Cinnamon Stars!

If you baked these with me just now, you’re experiencing the best aroma of the holidays. Savor it and look at those pretty cinnamon stars, aren’t they gorgeous? If you like, you can dust them lightly with powder sugar so they look like they are covered in freshly fallen snow. Add a few Vanillekipferl on a dark colored plate for a beautiful moon and stars presentation. And just wait till you taste one! …Just kidding, don’t wait! But do leave a few in a tin for a few days and they’ll get even better! 

Have you made this recipe? I’d love to get your feedback and your ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating! And I’d love to hear about your favorite Christmas cookies. And please don’t hesitate to ask in the comments if you have any questions!

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Parchment paper
Hand mixer
Vitamix
Blender
Food processor
Coffee, nut and spice grinder
Rotary grater
Star-shaped cookie cutters
Panela sugar
Evaporated cane juice
Coconut sugar
Redmond’s real salt
Almonds
Hazelnuts
Walnuts
Vanilla beans
Organic vanilla extract. You can get it in bulk from Azure Standard, along with so many other organic ingredients, give them a try!