[Sca-cooks] Question to the List - Sweet Turkish Crescents

[Tara]

> The tale sounds like that of kipfel, which are now better known as
  <snippage>
> The pastry sounds similar to one my Mother used to make, a shortbread cookie
> with nuts and spices shaped like a crescent and rolled in powdered sugar.

Also sounds an awful lot like the Eastern European kiffles, which are a
Christmas treat in my family.  Rather than a shortbread cookie, though,
it's a pastry cookie.  My grandmother has an old church cookbook with
descriptions of the things a girl needs to know before she's eligible
for marriage, and one of them was being able to roll kiffle dough so
thin that you can read print through it.  Then, they're filled with
either a fruit butter, ground nut mixture or poppyseed mixture.  My
favorite fillings are lekvar (prune butter) and apricot butter.  They're
rolled into a crescent, baked and doused in powdered sugar.  (I usually
just sprinkle them lightly so they look pretty.  I'm not a big fan of
powdered sugar.)  They are heaven on earth.  I've had more marriage
proposals over my kiffles.

I've been making these since high school, and I can still only get the
pastry fine enough if I roll it in little batches instead of large
sheets.  But, getting it super thin is critical - they just melt in your
mouth.

My husband thinks they look like a bunch of little manatees...

-Magdalena
who usually trys not to think about kiffles in the "off season"... too
tempting.