Wholegrain cookies: snowflake stars for cosy winter evenings

Take the butter out of the fridge in good time. It is ready when you can press a shallow dent into it with your finger. Put the butter and raw cane sugar into a bowl and beat them with the hand mixer or the food processor for about 3 minutes. You will see the mixture become lighter and wonderfully creamy. That is what will make the cookies tender later on.

Whisk the egg in a small mug. An egg without its shell usually weighs almost exactly the 53 g called for in the recipe, handy, isn't it? With the mixer running, let it run into the butter mixture in a thin stream and keep mixing until it is fully incorporated. Please don't tip it all in at once, or the mixture may curdle.

First stir in the oats and the ground almonds briefly. Then mix the spelt wholemeal flour with the cinnamon and the pinch of salt and add everything to the bowl. Now just mix on a low setting until no dry pockets of flour remain. At this point the dough is still crumbly, and that is exactly right.

Press the crumbs together with your hands and knead the dough only until it is smooth. The less you work it, the more tender your cookies will be. Then shape it into a flat, rectangular block, wrap it in cling film and chill it in the fridge for about an hour. A flat block cools down faster and is much easier to roll out later than a ball.

Preheat the oven to 170 °C convection and line two baking sheets with baking paper. Dust the work surface lightly with flour and roll the dough out to about 5 mm thick. Our favourite trick: place a strip of dough on the left and right as spacers. This way the dough is the same thickness everywhere, and all the stars are finished baking at the same time.

Cut out the stars with the ice crystal cookie cutter and press the cutter down as close together as possible so that only a few scraps are left over. We used the 7 cm cutter, which gives you about 40 cookies. The ice crystal comes in different sizes, though: with the small 4 or 5 cm stars you'll get considerably more cookies, and they need one to two minutes less in the oven. Place the stars on the baking paper with some space between them. Knead the scraps together briefly, roll them out again and keep cutting. If the dough becomes too soft in the process, let it rest in the fridge for 10 minutes.

Bake the cookies in the middle of the oven for 10 to 15 minutes, until the edges are lightly golden brown. When you take them out they will still be a little soft, but don't worry, they firm up as they cool. Let them cool completely on the tray before you decorate them, because on warm cookies the chocolate would not set properly.

To make the chocolate shine later and snap when you bite into it, it needs to be tempered. It sounds complicated, but it isn't! Melt two thirds of the couverture over a water bath or in the microwave in short bursts to 45 to 50 °C. Then add the remaining third and stir until everything has melted and the couverture has cooled to 31 to 32 °C. A Thermometer helps you a lot with this.

Pour the tempered couverture into a small, fairly deep bowl. Hold each star by one edge and dip it at an angle until it is halfway covered. Lift it out slowly, let it drip briefly and wipe the underside against the rim of the bowl. Then place it on a piece of baking paper.

Now comes the most beautiful part! Sprinkle the sugar sprinkles immediately over the still soft chocolate. It works best after every third or fourth star, so they are sure to stick. Then leave the cookies at room temperature for about 30 minutes to set, and your snowflake stars are ready for the Christmas plate.