Spekulatius Spiced German Christmas Cookies

It simply isn't Christmas in Germany without flat,crunchy and richly spiced Spekulatius. Traditionally Spekulatius are moulded into shapes with a small Christmas design on the surface. Well, those wooden Spekulatius forms are not cheap at all, so I have decided to use X'mas-themed cookie cutters to make these cookies. You can garnish the cookies with colourful sugar icings, or with confectionery coatings made with couverture chocolate, to decorate your X'mas tree, or table center.

500 g All-purpose flour, sifted 4 g Baking powder 2 g Baking ammonia angiesrecipes 200g Sugar 1 pack Vanilla sugar 2 Eggs

1/2 tsp Almond extract 100 g Almond, ground angiesrecipes 1/3 tsp Cardamom, ground 1/3 tsp Cloves, ground 1 tsp Cinnamon, ground angiesrecipes 200 g Butter, chilled

1. In a large bowl, mix flour, baking powder and ammonia. Make an indent in the middle and add eggs, sugar, spices and extract, and combine all into a thick dough. Cut in the cold butter and together with the ground almonds and knead it well to form a smooth dough. If the dough is still sticky, then wrap and rest it in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
   
2. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F. Roll out the dough into 3mm thick circle and cut out the cookies with favourite Christmas cookie cutters. Place them onto greased baking sheet and bake until starting to brown, about 10 minutes. When cool, store cookies in an air-tight container. Decorate the cookies with sugar icings as desired.