Today, I’m sharing a recipe for Italian Ricotta Christmas cookies that my mother made every holiday season. They are made with ricotta cheese and are as light and fluffy as a cloud, and they were always my favorite!
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Table of Contents
Making and Decorating Italian Christmas Cookies
When I was growing up, my mother always made these Italian Ricotta Christmas Cookies during holiday time. She would make them with different flavorings, such as anise and almond, and put a little extra decoration on each.
For example, in addition to colored sprinkles, she might put a little lemon peel on top of lemon-flavored cookies. With almond-flavored ones, she’d add little chopped almonds, and with the anise-flavored ones, she’d put tiny crushed anise seeds.
I’m happy to share this Italian Ricotta Christmas Cookies recipe with you, along with a recipe for how to make homemade Ricotta cheese.
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More Christmas Recipes
Now that you’ve learned how to make Italian Ricotta Christmas Cookies, try your hand at some other wonderful holiday recipes that are perfect for entertaining.
Homemade Christmas Gifts
Check out the following videos to learn how to make various homemade Christmas gifts.
- How to Make Homemade Extracts – Flavored Extracts – Baking Basics
Christmas Recipes and Gifts
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This holiday cooking marathon brings together my best holiday recipe videos for you to enjoy in one sitting
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Learn how to make these easy homemade gifts and discover other products perfect for your favorite traditional foods cook.
Grind Your Own Flour
If you’d like to make homemade flour for your Italian Ricotta Christmas cookies or other homemade baking, you can use different techniques to grind your whole grain from manual to electric, as I show you in the following video.
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Italian Ricotta Christmas Cookies
Equipment
- Cooling rack
Ingredients
Italian Ricotta Cookie Ingredients
- 2 cups Powdered sugar
- 2 sticks Butter, unsalted This is 1 cup of butter
- 2 tsp Lemon extract
- 3 large Eggs
- 16 ounce Container of ricotta cheese
- 4 cups All-purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp Salt
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 cup Colorful sprinkles
Icing Ingredients
- 4 cups Powdered sugar
- 1 large Lemon, zest and juice
- 1/2 tsp Lemon extract
- 1-2 tbsp Water, as needed
Instructions
Italian Ricotta Cookie Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C).
- In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together.
- Add one egg at a time to the butter and sugar mixture, mixing well after each egg addition.
- Add ricotta and lemon extract to the butter and sugar mixture and mix well.
- In a medium-sized bowl, whisk flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder together.
- Add the flour mixture to the butter and sugar mixture and mix well until a smooth dough is formed. (See video.)
- Using a teaspoon, drop dough onto a parchment-lined or greased baking sheet.
- Bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes until only lightly golden. DO NOT overbake.
- Once finished baking, remove the cookies from the oven and transfer them to a cooling rack.
- Once cooled, drizzle with icing and add sprinkles.
- These cookies will stay fresh, wrapped, on the counter for a few days. They can also be refrigerated, well wrapped, and will stay fresh for up to a week or two. If you want to freeze these cookies, I do not recommend adding the icing. Wrap them well, and they should stay fresh in the freezer for 2-3 months. Allow them to defrost, uncovered at room temperature, and then add the icing.
Icing Instructions
- Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl except the water. Icing should be quite thin so as to be able to drizzle over cookies.
- If the icing is too thick to drizzle, add 1 tablespoon of water to icing in a bowl and mix. If icing is still too thick to drizzle, add additional water, 1 tablespoon at a time until the desired consistency is reached.
Video
Notes
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