Here’s the last of our Christmas cookies this year – and yes, these butterhorns might be stretching the definition of “cookie”, since they’re more pastry-like, but they’re sweet and seasonal and go well paired with the other cookies we made this year, so we’ll count them as cookies too. Butterhorns come from the Mennonite communities of the Midwest and can come in savory varieties, but here we stuffed them with a nutty brown sugar filling and then topped them with icing and more nuts, so they’re a perfect Christmas treat. We based them on a recipe from the New York Times, and you should know before going in that you’ll need to plan on making these over the course of two days. But just do some prepping ahead of time and you’ll come away with an amazing and cute little holiday treat.
To make these, you’ll need:
- Flour
- Butter
- Sugar
- 3 packets of yeast (0.75 ounce in total)
- Milk
- 4 eggs
- Almond extract
- Brown sugar
- Almonds
- Heavy cream
- Powdered sugar
- Cooking spray
First you’ll want to make your dough by stirring together 4 cups of flour, 1/4 cup of sugar, and a large pinch of salt. Then take 2 sticks of cold butter and cut them each into 16 cubes and place the cubes into the flour mixture. Carefully use your hands to work the butter in until the flour forms into small clumps around the butter. In a separate bowl, measure out 1 1/4 cups of milk and microwave for 5 seconds, then pour all your yeast into the milk. Mix in just the yolks from your eggs, plus a teaspoon of almond extract, then gently stir all this into your bowl with the flour and butter until you have a dough.
Cover your bowl in plastic wrap and let the dough chill in your fridge overnight. When you’re ready to bake, make the butterhorn filling by mixing together 1 1/2 cups of brown sugar, 2 1/2 tablespoons of heavy cream, 2 tablespoons of flour, and 1/2 teaspoon of almond extract. Measure out 1/2 cup of almonds and chop them in a food processor, then stir those in too.
Now flour a large, flat surface in your kitchen and break your dough into three equally-sized pieces. Take one piece and roll it out with a rolling pin into a rough circle that’s about 16 inches across. Use a pizza cutter to slice the dough circle into 12 pieces of roughly the same size. Place a small spoonful of filling near the top of each piece, but not all the way at the edge.
Now take the two corners at the top of each piece of dough and bring them up and over the filling, letting them overlap on top of the filling. Then from the top start rolling up each piece of dough like a croissant, making sure to keep the filling inside and pinching the sides closed so the filling can’t get out. Line three baking sheets with parchment paper and coat the paper with cooking spray, then place the butterhorns on the sheets with the tail of each one down, so they don’t unroll while baking. They should each be 2 inches apart, so you can get 12 butterhorns on one sheet.
Repeat this process with the other two pieces of dough, then let the butterhorns rise on their sheets for an hour before baking them in the oven at 365°F for 12 to 15 minutes, until they’re lightly browned on top but not burned on the bottom. While they’re in the oven, make the icing by stirring together 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar, a tablespoon of melted butter, 4 tablespoons of heavy cream, and 1/4 teaspoon of almond extract. Also chop up another 1/2 cup of almonds in your food processor, and right when the butterhorns come out of the oven use an offset spatula to ice them and sprinkle the top with almonds.
This was Miriam’s favorite Christmas cookie this year – it was just the right combination of sweet and rich, with a light dough, a brown sugar filling, a sweet icing, and nuts both inside and out. The butterhorns did require overnight chilling of the dough, plus some creative sculpting to fill them and get the right shape, but they look really nice and taste amazing! So cheers to the holidays and our three Christmas cookies, but we’ve still got one more holiday surprise up our sleeves so make sure to check back in a few days to see what else we baked up.