Nusßmakronen / Hazelnut macaroons. Another Christmas recipe for you! These German cookies are soft and moist, and delightfully fragrant. They're quite luxurious but also quick to make, and easy to adapt to be gluten free. It's a great one to add to your Christmas cookie collection!

Nußmakronen

Nußmakronen ingredients

I found this recipe on The Daring Gourmet, a really great cooking blog with loads of German recipes! I've rewritten below, with my adaptions being to convert the measurements to metric and weights.

The ingredients are all supermarket staples, apart from the Back Oblaten, which we brought back from Germany when we were there for Christmas last year. Back Oblaten are German baking wafers, and are a standard ingredient over there. They're used as the base of Christmas cookies (and I suppose regular cookies too), and are almost tasteless - they remind me a bit of that edible rice paper that you sometimes see decorated in bright colours to top cupcakes.

I haven't seen Back Oblaten here on Australia, so I made sure to test a few macaroons without them. It works great without the Back Oblaten! So I'm happy to share the recipe here with you. Incidentally, the Back Oblaten contain wheat, and if you make these macaroons without them, they're gluten free.

Nusßmakronen mixture

The mixture is easy to make - just whisk the egg whites with salt until stiff, then gradually add sugar and cinnamon, before folding in some ground hazelnuts. You spoon the mixture out onto the wafers (or directly onto the baking paper if you're not using the Oblaten), press a little hazelnut into each one, and then bake.

Nußmakronen

Nußmakronen

The only added flavouring is a little dash of cinnamon, yet they somehow taste so complex and rich. I suppose it's the magic of the hazelnut meal! These keep quite well, so they're good to have in the cookie jar to pick at over a few days or even weeks.

Nußmakronen

Nußmakronen / Hazelnut Macaroons

Recipe adapted from The Daring Gourmet

Ingredients

3 egg whites

1/8 teaspoon salt

170 grams icing sugar, sifted

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

250 grams hazelnut meal

24 x 50 millimetre Back Oblaten, optional

24 whole hazelnuts

Method

Preheat oven to 175C.

Whisk egg whites and salt until stiff. Gradually add icing sugar and cinnamon, while beating. Add hazelnut meal and fold in gently with a metal spoon.

If using the Backoblaten, arrange them on a lined baking sheet. Place approximately 2 teaspoons of mixture onto each Backoblaten.

If not using Backoblaten, spoon the mixture directly on a lined baking sheet.

Press a whole hazelnut into each macaroon.

Bake for 15 minutes, or until the outside is dry and the edges are starting to brown.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container.

Makes approx. 24