Baked Santa Claus

Ingredients

• 200 g Flour
• 125 g sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla sugar
• 0.5 orange (unprocessed)
• 0.5 tsp cinnamon
• 1 pinch salt
• 125 g ground hazelnuts
• 200 g butter
• 1 egg
• 50 g chocolate glaze
• 200 g powdered sugar
• Lemon juice
• red and yellow food coloring
• powdered sugar (or decorative snowflakes)
• sugar pearls

Instructions

1. 1.

   For the dough, mix flour with sugar, vanilla sugar, grated orange zest, cinnamon, salt, and hazelnuts in a bowl. Beat butter with a pastry cutter, add the egg, and quickly knead into a smooth dough. Cover and refrigerate for about 1 hour.

2. 2.

   Meanwhile, create a Santa Claus stencil (from cardboard) or prepare cutting molds.

3. 3.

   Preheat the oven to 180 °C. Line one or two baking sheets with parchment paper.

4. 4.

   Roll out the dough to about 4 mm thickness, place the stencil on top, cut out shapes or use molds, lay them on the sheet and bake for 8–12 minutes until golden brown. Let the Santas cool on a wire rack.

5. 5.

   For the garnish, melt chocolate glaze in a double boiler. Whisk sifted powdered sugar with lemon juice into a thick icing.

6. 6.

   Divide the icing: color about 2 Tbsp yellow, split the rest roughly in half, leave one part white and color the other red. Brush the body and hat with red, apply hands, boots, and belt with chocolate glaze, and add beard, hair, and other details with white icing. Use yellow icing for belt buckle and small accents. Decorate eyes and noses with sugar pearls and let the cookies dry at room temperature.