Pracny Christmas Cookies

Pracny cookies are one of the traditional Czech Christmas sweets. They smell wonderfully of spices such as crushed cloves, dark cocoa, cinnamon, and freshly grated lemon zest. Let's bake pracny together according to my grannie's old, handwritten recipe!

The main ingredient of these cookies forms ground nuts. The spiced nut dough is pressed into small molds of various shapes (rolls, buns, stars), and then baked. Finished pracny cookies are coated in icing sugar and left to rest for at least a few days.

Pracny cookies are otherwise called "medvědí tlapky" – bear paws (after one of the mold shapes, which resembles the paws).

MY TIP: Here you will find more Czech Christmas cookies

📝 Ingredients

To bake pracny cookies, you'll need:

• Unsalted butter; take it out of the fridge about half an hour beforehand to allow it to soften a little
• Walnuts; my grandmother's recipe calls for almonds; you can also use hazelnuts (all three variants are possible). Instead of whole nuts, buy already ground nuts (nut flour) for baking.
• Powdered sugar
• All-purpose flour
• Egg yolk
• Lemon zest; freshly grated
• Cinnamon; ground
• Cocoa powder; unsweetened, dark Dutch type
• Cloves; spices. You have to crush them; a mortar and pestle will help, a clean electric coffee grinder, or smash it inserted into a piece of folded baking paper with a mallet.
• A little butter and plain flour to grease the molds.

✅ You’ll find the exact amount of ingredients below in the recipe card, which you can also print out.

Next, prepare icing sugar to coat the pracny cookies. Mix it with vanilla for extra flavor.

➤ I use homemade vanilla sugar, which I prepare simply by pouring the icing sugar into a larger container and sticking a vanilla bean in it. I screw the container in, tap it, and in three days, I have luxurious vanilla sugar!

📷 Instructions with Photos

Before you start: First, grind the nuts, finely crush the cloves, grate the zest of a carefully washed/or organic lemon.

STEP 1: Put the nuts, flour, sugar, spices, and egg yolk in a bowl. Work into a smooth dough. Be patient; it may take a moment. I don't use any kitchen mixer; I work with my own hands because I trust them the most.

STEP 3: Wrap the dough in cling film and place it in the fridge for at least two hours to rest. If you have time, leave the dough in the refrigerator overnight.

STEP 4: Prepare the pracny molds: grease each with a bit of butter and dust with flour.

STEP 5: Take the rested dough out of the fridge and let it sit on the kitchen counter for about ten minutes. Scoop equally sized pieces of dough and press them into the prepared molds.

STEP 6: Transfer the filled molds to a baking tray and bake in a preheated oven at 340 °F (170 °C) for 10 minutes.

STEP 7: Let the baked pracny cookies cool almost completely before unmolding. Grasp the mold by the edge, turn it upside down and gently tap it on the surface of the kitchen counter.

STEP 8: Coat immediately in vanilla-scented icing sugar.

🍱 Storage

Pracny cookies are crispy right after baking. Czech home bakers leave them to rest for several days or weeks to soften. If the pracny are to appear on the Christmas table, they are baked about three weeks before Christmas.

Store the pracny cookies in a sturdy, clean paper box with a lid. Line the bottom with foil and place a paper napkin on it. Use the napkins to line the sides of the box, too. Place in the pracny, and as a final step, cover these with a napkin again.

Store in a cool, dry place.

🍪 Pracny Molds

Czech grannies had beautiful molds for baking pracny cookies. The molds were in the shape of rolls, stars, fish, figures, and so on. In the Czech Republic, you can buy modern metal molds of similar shapes. However, I have not seen any like them abroad.

I looked on Amazon in the US; my tip is these small metal molds, for example, might be suitable for baking pracny.

👌 Useful Tips

• I always like to grind my nuts fresh for baking. I use this type of hand grinder to grind nuts.
• You need to let the dough rest for the pracny cookies. If you skip this step, you won’t be able to unmould the cookies; however, they will crumble.
• Grease the pracny molds the first time you bake them. If you press another batch of dough into them, just wipe off the residue from the previous baking with a paper towel.

More sweet Christmas recipes:

• Vanilla crescents – vanilkové rohlíčky
• Linzer cookies – linecké cukroví
• Walnut shaped cookies – orechy

Or check the category Czech Christmas cookies

Recipe card