German Christmas Baking Round-up

German Christmas Baking Round-up: Our Top 5 Recipes (GF)

Happy 1st of Advent! It’s been a bit quiet on the blog over November. It was a really busy month for us – not only did we celebrate both my boys’ birthdays, but my parents finally made it over from Germany for a visit and we spent two wonderful weeks together. We hadn’t seen them since December 2019. So we’ve had a happy but very busy time, and now we’re looking forward to a more peaceful December. And the Christmas season, of course, always starts for us with a big baking session on Advent Sunday.

German Christmas baking

To make things a little easier for you, I thought I’d pull together all our Top 5 German Christmas baking recipes in one blog (especially since German Christmas cookies got a bit of a renewed interest after The Great British Bakeoff chose them as one of their challenges in German Week during the recent series!) Oh, and before I forget, these recipes are all gluten free!

Vanille Kipferl/ Vanilla Crescents

German Christmas Cookie Recipes Vanille Kipferl

Germany’s favourite Christmas cookies by a mile. No Christmas is complete without these melt in the mouth vanilla crescents.

>> get the Vanille Kipferl recipe


Zimtsterne / Cinnamon Stars

German Christmas Cookie Recipes Zimsterne Cinnamon Stars

These yummy cinnamon stars traditionally use ground hazelnuts, but as my husband is allergic to hazelnuts I make them with ground almonds. You can use either. As well as gluten free, these are also dairy free. Since they only use egg whites, Zimtsterne are great to bake alongside Vanillekipferl which only use egg yolks.

>> get the Zimsterne recipe


Lebkuchen/ Gingerbread

German Christmas Cookie Recipes Lebkuchen

Germany is famous for its Lebkuchen. This recipe is actually a hybrid between German Lebkuchen and British gingerbread, which I came up with last year after several failed attempts at baking gluten free Lebkuchen. This hybrid recipe does the trick!

>> get the Lebkuchen recipe


Butterkekse/ Butter Cookies

German Christmas Cookie Recipes Butterkekse Butter Cookies

This recipe is the one that the kids love the most. It’s a basic recipe similar to sugar cookies, perfect for getting creative with cookie cutters. You can leave them plain, brush with some whisked egg before baking, or decorate with icing. Sprinkles optional (though please do remember to double check any sprinkles to make sure they are gluten free, if required).

>> get the Butter Cookies recipe


Quark Stollen

German Christmas Baking Recipes Stollen

I’m not a fan of raisins or other dried fruit in my baking, with the exception of Stollen. This gluten free recipe is so good, even my sceptical brother-in-law loved it. Rather than Stollen made with yeast, which requires a lot of kneading and rising, this is a much simpler recipe that uses quark – a staple of the German kitchen. So if you’ve ever seen quark at the supermarket and wondered what to do with it, now you have a recipe to try!

>> get the Stollen recipe


As always, all recipes, tutorials and other resources on this blog are free to enjoy and share, but if you feel able to and would like to make a small donation to help keep this blog running, then it would be very much appreciated. Just hit the support button. Thank you!

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