Mini Vanilla "Croissants" With Nuts

So it is 8th of September: it is my Name Day. I know many of you are raising your eyebrows...but in Hungary we celebrate  Name Days as well as  Birthdays. To explain what it's all about I included a description from Wikipedia, but the main thing is: I was baking for my colleagues, but being a weekday I was looking for quick recipes. I baked Mini Vanilla "Croissant" With Nuts, Chocolate Beetroot Cake (I was given a big veg box  by my friend who is ordering from a farm....but they can't eat it all, and I had 8 beetroots to deal with) and Coconut  Balls With Cherry inside. These are all quick and simple recipes: mix it, bake it (you don't even have to bake the Coconut Balls) and done:)

 Mini Vanilla "Croissants" With Nuts

Ingredients (makes about 48)

300g plain flour

240g butter (at room temperature)

150g chopped mixed nut, or walnut, or hazelnut...any nut you like

90g icing sugar

1 vanilla pod

Some icing sugar mixed with vanilla sugar for dusting

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Mix all ingredients until it is well incorporated, you should get a slightly wet, sticky dough.

Wash your hands and start shaping little sticks(4-6cm in length), then bend both end to create the croissant shape.

Bake it for 15-25 minutes, until it is firm to touch. Remove from the oven and leave it to cool for 1-2 minutes so you can handle them. Roll each croissant in the icing sugar, to cover the top and the bottom surface as well.

This little croissant is soft but crunchy at the same time: a big hit at the workplace.

Hints and tips:

-you can also add some spices to the croissant to have slightly different taste: last time I added 1 tsp cinnamon to the dough and it was truly divine, but you can also try mixed spices

So about the name day:

"A name day is a tradition in many countries in Europe and Latin America that consists of celebrating the day of the year associated with one's given name.

The custom originated with the Greek Orthodox calendar of saints and Roman Catholic calendar of saints, where believers, named after a particular saint, would celebrate that saint's feast day. In many countries, however, there is no longer any explicit connection to Christianity. It remains more popular in Southern and Eastern (Catholic and Orthodox) rather than in Northern (predominantly Protestant) Europe.

Hungary

Name days (in Hungarian: névnap) in Hungary are very popular, often as much as a person's actual birthdate. A woman is typically given flowers on her name day by acquaintances, including in the workplace, and the price of flowers often rises around the dates of popular names because of demand. A bottle of alcohol is a common gift for men on their name day. Children frequently bring sweets to school to celebrate their name days. Name days are more often celebrated than birthdays in workplaces, presumably because it is simpler to know the date since most calendars contain a list of name days. You can also find the name day on daily newspapers by the date and on Hungarian websites. Some highly popular names have several name days; in that case, the person chooses on which day he or she wishes to celebrate. The list of the name days is, as usual in name day celebrating cultures, based on the traditional Catholic saints' feasts, but the link of the secular name days calendar to the Catholic calendar is not maintained any more. For example, even religious Catholic people named Gergely (Gregory) after Pope Gregory the Great still celebrate their name days on 12 March, although the Church moved the feast of that saint to 3 September in 1969."