These adorable mini walnut cups are a classic Czech Christmas treat — made from tender walnut dough, filled with a silky walnut cream, and topped with chocolate and a walnut for the perfect festive bite.
Table of contents
Lots of reasons to make these Christmas walnut mini cups
A taste of Czech Christmas tradition
These walnut mini cups bring a piece of Czech holiday heritage right into your kitchen. They’re one of those nostalgic cookies that appear on every Czech Christmas table — delicate, handmade, and filled with the warmth of family traditions passed down through generations.
Deliciously versatile and customizable
Although walnuts are classic, this recipe is wonderfully flexible. You can easily swap in hazelnuts, almonds, or pecans to create your own twist while keeping the same tender dough and creamy filling. It’s a great way to personalize your cookie platter or use whatever nuts you have on hand.
Perfect for creating cozy holiday memories
Making these tiny filled cups is a fun, hands-on Christmas project — the kind that fills your home with holiday scents and brings the whole family together. We love sitting down together at the table and assemble these yummy cups with kids. Or bake them for friends and make a gift baskets filled different kind of Czech Christmas cookies. Try also other Czech traditional cookies like Hazenlut-Vanilla Crescents, Classic Gingerbread, Linzer Cookies, Mini Florentine Cookies, Paris walnut Sticks, Czech Beehive Cookies, Ischler Little Cakes and more. These little treats help build the kind of cozy Christmas moments you’ll remember for years.
Ingredients
Flour -All-purpose flour is best when baking cookies. I do not recommend using self-rising flour due to the nature of the recipe, we do not need any leavening for these cookies.
Walnuts – Use good quality walnuts, already cleaned from shells. Choose broken pieces of walnuts in the base dough and keep well shaped walnuts for the decoration.
Sugar – In this recipe, we will be using two kinds of sugar. Powdered sugar for easier incorporation into the dough and brown (molasses) sugar for the filling,
Butter – Always use unsalted butter and room temperature butter, when making cookies.
Egg – Whole medium egg for the mini cup dough.
Cream – Use minimum 35% cream. It will give richer taste to the filling and will hold shape better.
Vanilla biscuits/wafers – I am using my own recipe for pastry vanilla biscuits, but you can use any vanilla biscuits like lady fingers, Nilla wafers or any European vanilla biscuits.
Rum – The main taste of these walnut cups is dark spiced rum. I am using Czech kind, but you can use any Caribbean dark spiced rum to add special Christmas aroma. As a substitution, you can use imitation Rum extract,
Chocolate – Is used for covering the top of the cups. You can use chocolate chips of your choice, or any milk or dark baking chocolate. Tip:use cocoa butter to dilute the chocolate for better handling.
How to make Christmas walnut cups
Walnut dough cups
First, we will prepare walnut dough, that is the base for this delicious cups. Gather all the ingredients for walnut dough cups and place them into a kitchen standing mixer. This step is really easy, we will need to mix all the ingredients on medium speed, until it comes together into. Usually I mix mine until I get ball dough. But sometimes, depending on the temperature of your kitchen and the ingredients, you might have to take the dough and knead it lightly with hands.
Once the dough is holding together, place the dough on plastic wrap and cover. Let the dough cool in the refrigerator for 2 hours or overnight.
Once the dough has chilled, take it out from the refrigerator and let it come to room temperature. Prepare cookies cups and brush them gently inside with butter. Cut the dough into small cubes and fill the cups with the dough by pressing with your thumb into the cookie cup form. The quantity of the dough used depends on the size of the cups. I am using traditional cookie form, that is mini-one-bite size, diameter of 1.8 inch. And I use approximately 1.5 teaspoon of the dough to fill it up.
Place all the filled cups onto a baking sheet and bake in preheated oven 180 C -375 C for 10 minutes.
Walnut filling for cups
The filling can be prepared a day in advance. In a small pot, heat up gently the cream with brown sugar, ground walnuts, ground biscuits, vanilla extract and rum. Mix all this together and then let the filling cool off in the refrigerator.
Place the filling into a piping bag and fill up the mini cups with this delicious walnut filling. Let the cookies with filling let cool in refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Chocolate cover
Melt the chocolate with cocoa butter in the microwave with two to three sets of 1 minute, power 70% or until the chocolate is well melted and ready to be used. Dip the mini cups in the chocolate and decorate with half of the walnut.
Variations
You can try different type of nuts, like almonds, pecans, hazelnuts.
Storage
Store in airtight container, in the refrigerator and consume within 5 -7 days. For longer storage in the freezer, use an airtight container and store for up to 3 months.
Defrosting – bring it to room temperature (do not reheat) or place overnight in the refrigerator.
Expert Tips
Use room temperature ingredients – It’s one of the most important tips I can give. For this kind of bakes, room temperature butter, eggs, cream etc. is necessity. Once you know, that you will be baking, to bake, take out all the ingredients minimum of 2–3 hours in advance, in room temperature. All ingredients will combine smoothly and won’t have trouble of creating this recipe.
To speed up the process, prepare the dough a day before baking, as well as the walnut filling. You will save tons of time in between the steps.
Walnuts are recommended for this recipe, because they give more pronounce flavour. But you can substitute walnuts for less intensive nuts, such as hazelnuts, almonds or pecans.
Do not omit rum in this recipe, and choose the right kind of rum. If you can’t find Czech rum (called “Tuzemak”) then opt for dark spiced Caribbean rums, they have caramel-vanilla flavouring, which is specific for Czech Traditional Christmas cookies. I have sometimes been using brand called Captain Morgan or Kraken, and they deliver the right aroma.
FAQ
Yes, feel free using pecans, almonds or hazelnuts.
You can use baileys or if you don’t want to use alcohol, use rum essence without alcohol.
More recipes
- LINZER COOKIES
- SHORTBREAD PISTACHIO COOKIES
- MINI FLORENTINE COOKIES
- GINGERBREAD SOFT COOKIES
- CRANBERRY ORANGE SHORTBREAD COOKIES
CHRISTMAS WALNUT MINI CUPS
Ingredients
Walnut dough for cups
- 250 g all-purpose flour
- 70 g walnuts ground
- 70 g powdered sugar
- 120 g unsalted butter room temperature
- 1 medium whole egg room temperature
Walnut filling for cups
- 340 ml cream 35%
- 30 ml dark spiced rum
- 150 g brown sugar
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 150 g vanilla biscuits ground
- 150 g walnuts ground
- 20 pieces whole walnuts for decoration
Chocolate cover
- 1 cup chocolate chips
- 2 teaspoons cocoa butter
Instructions
Walnut dough for cups
- Gather all the ingredients for walnut dough cups. Place them all into a kitchen standing mixer and mix until all ingredients comes together into a ball. Place the dough on plastic wrap and cover. Let the dough cool in the refrigerator for 2 hours or overnight.
- Prepare cookies cups and brush them gently inside with butter. Cut the dough into small cubes and fill the cups with the dough by pressing with your thumb into the cookie cup form.
- Place all the filled cups onto a baking sheet and bake in preheated oven 180 C -375 C for 10 minutes.
Walnut filling for cups
- In a small pot, heat up gently the cream with brown sugar, ground walnuts, ground biscuits, vanilla extract and rum. Mix all this together and then let the filling cool off in the refrigerator.
- Place the filling into a piping bag and fill up the mini cups with this delicious walnut filling. Let the cookies with filling let cool in refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Chocolate cover
- Melt the chocolate with cocoa butter in the microwave with two to three sets of 1 minute, power 70% or until the chocolate is well melted and ready to be used. Dip the mini cups in the chocolate and decorate with half of the walnut.
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