Recipe: Cinnamon Chestnut Cookies

Two warm autumn flavors, cinnamon and chestnut, combine to make a special seasonal cookie. Medium-light in color, and with a smooth texture, this recipe is good for complex molds. Make sure to use sweetened chestnut paste rather than unsweetened pureed chestnuts.

These cookies are crisp, on account of the high percentage of nuts. Make them thin for best results.

Cinnamon Chestnut Cookies

1 cup (225 grams) butter or margarine

1 large egg

1/2 cup (160 grams) sweetened chestnut paste

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon cream

1/2 cup (100 grams) sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

About 1 1/4 (165 grams) all purpose flour

1. Tear the chestnut paste into marble sized bits.

2. Melt the butter.

3. Combine the warm butter and the chestnut paste and beat well until smooth.See note.

4. Beat together the egg, vanilla extract, and cream and add to the butter mixture.

5. Combine the sugar, salt, and cinnamon, and add to the butter mixture

6. Add flour slowly until the mixture is solid enough to knead

7. Transfer to a work surface and knead in more flour to make a dough the consistency of children's modeling clay.

8. Roll and form the dough per the instructions for your cookie molds or the directions in my book, "Baking with Cookie Molds".

9. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees Celsius).

10. Bake one test cookie for approximately 15 minutes. Adjust time and temperature as needed, and bake the remainder of the cookies.