Kringel - butter almond shortbread biscuits

Do you still remember your grandmother's or mother's crunchy butter almond biscuits, how they tirelessly twisted the dough through the meat grinder and its star-shaped attachment?
I liked these funny dough snakes as a child very much and it was especially nice when you could nibble a little bit of the dough.

These "Kringel" have always been one of our family's favourite biscuits and they do not only taste lovely at Christmas time.

Method:

First stir the butter until frothy.
Then add the grated almonds, the sugar, the eggs and the vanilla sugar. Process the whole thing into a roll and chill in the refrigerator for one hour.
After the rest period, pieces of dough are gradually cut off the roll and pressed through the star-shaped biscuit attachment of the meat grinder. The strands of dough are about 7 cm long and are laid out on the slighhtly greased baking tray in small circles.
The butter almond biscuits are then baked golden brown at 200°C for about 10 minutes on the middle rail of the oven and then left to cool on the wire rack.
After the biscuits have cooled down, one half of each biscuit is then coated with the melted dark chocolate couverture.

Tip: To really get the perfect baking result, I always recommend buying good quality unpeeled almonds and remove the skin yourself. You just put them in a saucepan, scald them with boiling water and let them stand for a while. Each individual almond is then taken between thumb and forefinger and, under slight pressure, the almonds slide out of their skin almost by themselves. Spread the almonds on a kitchen towel to dry. After that they are ready to use and can be freshly ground in an almond mill. This effort is really worth it.