Vanillekipferl are really easy to make and look nice as presents, & above all they're completely addictive. There are variations of them all over central Europe: this is a Czech one (vanilkove rohlicky).
this is the recipe I use:
250g plain flour
180g butter
100g ground hazelnuts (or you can use almonds)
50g icing sugar, and then more for rolling them in
Rub the butter into the dry ingredients and then squeeze and knead the crumbs together until you have a dough. It looks really crumbly at first, but keep squeezing/kneading and it will be a workable dough very soon (you don't need any liquid). Make little rolls in your hands, about the size of your little finger, and bend them into crescent shapes as you put them on the baking sheet.
Bake at 180 degrees C for 5-10 minutes (keep an eye on them, they're best if they stay pale). When they've cooled a bit, roll them in icing sugar. Technically speaking, there should be vanilla in the rolling sugar (hence their name...) but I do it without.
Some recipes have egg yolks in, but apparently they're more melt-in-the-mouth without. They're a bit fragile when they first come out of the oven, so let them cool a bit before handling them.