It’s been Christmas for us all year round. I baked gingerbread, kneaded marzipan and tested spiced cookies for half of winter, all of spring and part of summer. Thomas photographed vanilla cookies in April and mini-stollen in May. Everything for our new book “Süß & Gesund Weihnachten”, which has been in bookstores for a few weeks now and is already getting a lot of stains in some of your kitchens. Every day I come across photos that readers have made of the recipes – which makes me really happy.

Making a book is a lot of fun, but to paraphrase Karl Valentin: books are beautiful, but they are a lot of work too. That’s why it’s really satisfying to see, that it was worth the long hours of work and the one or two sleepless nights.

Yesterday a friend asked me whether I would still bake Christmas cookies this year or whether I would be fed up with them after my baking marathon for the book. My answer was very clear: OF COURSE I WILL BAKE CHRISTMAS COOKIES! I can never get too much from baking and cooking. And a pre-Christmas season without any homemade sweets is kind of sad, don’t you think? Of course, this year I’ll only make recipes from the new book, that’s for sure. And today I have one of them as a (German) recipe video for you …

And now my question for you: do you like to bake Christmas cookies? What’s your favorite kind? I’m looking forward to your comment below!

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SPANISH PINE NUT BALLS

Servings 40 pieces

Prep Time 45

Print Recipe

Ingredients

40 g pine nuts
200 g ground almonds
1/4 tsp salt
60 g white almond butter unsweetened
60 ml maple syrup grade A
1/6 tsp bitter almond oil

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Roast the pine nuts in a pan until they are lightly browned.
In a bowl, mix the ground almonds with salt, almond butter, maple syrup and bitter almond oil first with a spoon, then with your hands. Add the pine nuts and knead in.
Line a baking sheet with baking paper. Take the teaspoon-sized portions of the dough and shape them into balls with slightly moistened hands (you need a bit of sensitivity here, as the pine nuts come off the dough easily - just be patient and push the kernels back in).
Place the balls on the baking paper and bake for about 5 minutes. Switch the oven to fan-assisted and top heat and bake for another 2 minutes with the baking sheet on the top shelf, so that the balls are also lightly browned from above.

Wellcuisine Stefanie Reeb

PS: If you don’t know our new book yet, just leaf through it …