Viennese Crescents

Ingredients:
3 dozen (depending on size)
1/2 vanilla bean
1 1/2 to 2 cups sifted confectioner's sugar
2 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 cup (2 sticks) and 1 tbs butter (at room temperature)
2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup almonds walnuts, grated or finely chopped

Directions:
1. pulverize the vanilla bean and mix it into sifted confectioner's sugar. The longer it sits the more vanilla-y the sugar will be.
2. Preheat over to 350 F degrees.
3. Mix flour and butter with your hands. Add granulated sugar, nuts, and mix until smooth.
4. Shape dough into crescent shapes, a tsp to a tbs of dough at a time.
5. bake on an non-greased baking sheet 15-20 minutes, or until points of the crescents are browned on the bottom. Allow to cool so the cookies set.
6. One at a time place the cookies in the bowl of confectioner's sugar and coat and then shake off excess powder.

AMENDMENT: Our family only uses walnuts now. But I suppose the original Viennese Crescents were Almonds. I never looked at the original recipe before. This is a family change though. I also learned the dark family cookie secret: that my grandfather cheated and got the original recipe from the New York Times in, I believe, the late 1960's/ very early 1970's and my father stole it from him. Somewhere in there our family changed it from almonds to walnuts though. So even if we DID get the recipe from a newspaper, we augmented it to make it our own. Plus, my family is actually Austrian, so Viennese Crescents are our family favorite for the holiday season.