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