Traditional Frankfurt Bethmännchen is a soft marzipan pastry decorated with three almond halves. The pastry is famous at Christmas time, but you can find it in Frankfurt also throughout the year. I guess we always find an excuse to have a little marzipan now and then.
Table of Contents
Recipe

Traditional Frankfurts Bethmännchen
- 250 g marzipan
- 80 g sugar powdered
- 40 g flour
- 1 egg white
- 1 egg yolk
- 65 g ground almonds
- 50 g almond halfs
- 1 tbsp water
- Take a large bowl and mix together: marzipan, powdered sugar, flour, ground almonds and egg white.
- Preheat the oven to 150 degrees Celsius.
- Prepare a medium size bowl with a cold water and make sure you keep your hands wet while dealing with marzipan. Form small cones (higher then an almond halve) from the dough and decorate each one with 3 almond halves. Remember to keep you hand wet!
- Bake for 10 minutes.
- Mix water with egg yolk and after 10 minutes has passed, brush your cookies using just a little bit of egg mixture. We just want the top of the cookie to be nice and brown!
- Bake your cookies for another 5 minutes.

Bethmännchen is a German pastry that originated in Frankfurt. Bethmännchen are baked for Christmas; you can buy them at Frankfurt’s Christmas Market. The legend says that this cookie was developed for Simon Moritz Bethmann (a wealthy banker from Frankfurt) in 1838, who had four children; therefore, the pastry was decorated with four almond halves. Since the death of his son Heinrich, the cookies have been decorated only with three almond halves. The recipe hasn’t been changed since that time.
Today, I will show you how to bake Bethmännchen! The ingredients—marzipan, almonds, powdered sugar, flour, and eggs—are simple.

This recipe is similar to the Vanillekipferl recipe I tried for the first time with Katharina, my husband’s sister. She knew how to make them, so I decided to help her and see her process. The Bethmännchen turned out delicious, encouraging me to bake them myself again. Now, I even have German Christmas cookies mastered!
I hope you will enjoy this recipe, exactly like the German people did for over a century!
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2 thoughts on “Traditional Frankfurt Bethmännchen”
love this recipe so much ! ive tried a bunch of different variation found online but this is definitely the one, always impressed my family and friend and delicious in coffee, thanks !! 😀
Thanks, Karl for taking the time to write this wonderful comment for making my day 😉