Blue Finger cookies

Blauwvingers

200 grams / 8 oz butter
175 grams / 7 oz soft light brown sugar
pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla sugar
1 egg
200 grams / 8 oz flour
25 grams / 1 oz hazelnuts
50 grams / 2 oz icing sugar
1 tbsp cocoa

Stirring with a spoon, soften the butter in a bowl. Add the brown sugar, salt, vanilla sugar and the egg and mix well. Sift the flour bit by bit over it and thoroughly fold it in the butter/sugar mix.

Chop the nuts and add them to the mix as well.

Grease a cookie sheet with butter.

Put the mix into a cake decorating bag and attach a wide star (serrated) tip. Pipe 3-4”/7-10 cm long cookies on the sheet, spaced an inch (3 centimetres) apart.

Bake the cookies in a pre-heated oven at 175ºC/340ºF for 15 minutes until golden brown.

After baking, put the cookies on a rack to cool. While waiting, sift the cocoa and icing sugar into a small bowl and add drop-by-drop about 1 tablespoon of water. Stir well into a smooth chocolate paste.

With a brush, put chocolate in the shape of a finger nail on one end of the cookie.

(The cookie is named after the inhabitants of Zwolle who in the surrounding area earned the nickname Blauwvingers. In the Middle Ages, the city elders asked the neighbouring - and rival - town of Kampen to buy Zwolle’s carillon in order to get much needed cash. Magistrates of Kampen agreed but stipulated that they were allowed to determine the denomination of the payment. To embarrass their Zwolle neighbours, Kampen’s payment came in the form of the smallest denomination possible, the pure copper four duit pieces, a whole cart full of them. Apparently, Zwolle’s officials counted every single penny till their fingers turned blue from the oxide).