What is a Zimtstern?
A chewy star-shaped Christmas biscuit built on ground almonds and egg white rather than wheat flour, topped with a white icing. The name is literally cinnamon star: Zimt plus Stern. It belongs to advent and christmas, and it is German and Swiss rather than Scandinavian, which is worth saying because it turns up in Nordic Christmas collections alongside genuinely Swedish biscuits.
The defining fact is the flour base: ground almond (typically no wheat flour). There is no wheat in it. The structure comes from ground almonds bound with egg white, and the sweetness and the setting come from sugar. That makes it a meringue-adjacent biscuit rather than a shortbread-adjacent one, and it explains every way in which it does not behave like a rolled cookie.
Why it behaves the way it does
No flour means no gluten, and no gluten means nothing holds the dough together mechanically. It is held together by sugar and egg white, so it is sticky rather than elastic: it does not knead, it does not tolerate re-rolling well, and it cannot be handled the way a flour dough can. Rolling it usually needs sugar rather than flour on the surface, since flour would be a foreign body.
It also means the biscuit stays chewy instead of going crisp. Almond fat and egg white set to something dense and slightly elastic, and it does not stale the way a wheat biscuit does. An advantage that is exactly why these keep through Advent in a tin. A Zimtstern that has gone hard has usually been overbaked rather than gone stale.
The white top is the other characteristic. It is an icing of egg white and sugar, applied before baking rather than after, so it sets to a matte opaque crust in the oven rather than a glaze. That is why the surface is dull white rather than shiny, and why the icing is part of the biscuit rather than a decoration on it.
Naturally gluten-free, with a caveat
Because the base is almonds, a Zimtstern made traditionally contains no gluten, which makes it one of the few classic Christmas biscuits that needs no adaptation. That is genuinely useful and is worth knowing.
The caveat is the usual one for anything coeliac. Ground almonds are frequently milled and packed in facilities that also handle wheat, and icing sugar sometimes carries wheat starch as an anti-caking agent. Neither is a property of the recipe; both are properties of the packet. Anyone baking for coeliac guests needs to read the two labels rather than trust the ingredient list.
Cutting stars out of a sticky dough
The shape is in the name, and it is the practical difficulty. A sticky almond dough drags on a cutter, so the standard answers are to chill the dough thoroughly, to dip the cutter in water or sugar between cuts, and to accept that offcuts do not re-roll indefinitely, because each pass picks up more sugar and the dough gets progressively harder to handle.
The dough also benefits from being made ahead. Ground almonds absorb moisture slowly, so a mixture that seems unworkably wet when first combined is often perfectly manageable after a few hours cold. Adding more sugar to correct the texture immediately is the common mistake, and it makes the finished biscuit sweeter and harder for no gain.
Rolling between two sheets of baking parchment is the other common approach, since it avoids putting anything on the dough at all. The thickness matters more than with a flour biscuit: rolled thin these dry out and lose the chew that defines them, so they are usually left noticeably thicker than a cut-out cookie would be. More Christmas baking is in the Nordic section.
Questions about Zimtsterne
What is a Zimtstern?
A chewy star-shaped German Christmas biscuit built on ground almonds and egg white rather than wheat flour, with a white egg-white-and-sugar icing baked onto the top.
Are Zimtsterne gluten free?
The traditional recipe contains no gluten, since the base is almonds rather than flour. The caveats are practical rather than in the recipe: ground almonds are often packed in facilities handling wheat, and some icing sugar contains wheat starch.
Why is my dough so sticky?
Because there is no flour in it. It is held together by sugar and egg white rather than gluten, so it is sticky by nature. Chill it thoroughly, roll it between parchment, and dip the cutter between cuts.
Why did they come out hard rather than chewy?
Overbaked, or rolled too thin. The chew comes from almond fat and egg white setting dense, and both thin rolling and extra oven time drive out the moisture that keeps it. These are left thicker than a cut-out cookie.
Is the white top icing added after baking?
Before. It is an egg-white and sugar icing applied to the raw biscuit and baked with it, which is why it sets matte and opaque rather than shiny.