Italian Ricotta Cookies

This is an old family recipe for Italian ricotta cookies. I am sure there are many old Italian families with the same or similar recipes. I remember my Aunt would always make these Italian ricotta cookies for holidays or special occasions.

When we finally got my Aunt to share the recipe, I think she purposely messed it up so our cookies wouldn’t come out as good as hers. It took some experimentation to get them right. Now I think ours are better than the originals.

We love to make these for Christmas, Easter or really any special occasion. There are certain people that request these now even for back yard barbecues. This batch is for a back yard party in late September so we went with autumn colors. I hope you enjoy these as much as we do. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think.

-Scott

Print Recipe

Italian Ricotta Cookies

This is an old family recipe from my Aunt. She would probably kill me for sharing it.

Prep Time30 mins

Cook Time10 mins

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: Italian

Keyword: Butter, Cookies, Italian, Ricotta

Servings: 100 cookies

Ingredients

Cookie Dough

• 1 cup butter softened
• 1 cup ricotta
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 4 1/4 cups flour sifted
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt

Frosting

• 2 cups confectioners sugar
• 4 Tbs milk
• 4 tsp almond extract
• Food coloring
• Colored sprinkles

Instructions

Cookies

• You should make the dough the night before and refrigerate over night, or at least a few hours ahead.
• Beat butter and ricotta until creamy
• Add vanilla, then sugar gradually, beating until well blended
• Beat in eggs one at a time
• Stir in dry ingredients by hand, just until blended
• Refrigerate the dough at least two hours but preferably overnight, keep the dough in the refrigerator between batches
• Roll a half teaspoon full of dough into a ball, place on a parchment lined cookie sheet
• Bake 10 to 12 minutes in 360° oven until slightly browned on bottom
  
• Cool on wire rack

Frosting and assembly

• Mix the confectioners sugar, milk, almond flavor (or flavor of your choice) and food coloring by hand, frosting will be relatively thin
• Dip cooled cookies, top side down in frosting then invert right-side up onto wire rack
  
• Sprinkle tops with colored sprinkles and allow the frosting to dry before packaging the cookies
  

Notes

We like to make a variety of colors so we split the frosting into two or three batches with different colors of food coloring depending on the event.

You can also use different extracts in the frosting.  We generally like almond, but I could see this with anise or other flavors.