Ricciarelli (Italian Christmas cookies): the recipe

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ricciarelli
 

The arcane is revealed. I might have understood my personal connection between marzipan and Christmas. It took a few days, before it came back to my mind one of the typical treat of the Tuscan Christmas: ricciarelli. 

If you are not familiar with them, ricciarelli are traditional cookies from Siena made, indeed, with marzipan. As panettone, pandoro and torrone, ricciarelli cookies just pop up during Christmas festivities to disappear then till the next Advent. This explains why marzipan reminded me so much of Christmas. It is incredible how tastes and flavours rest engraved in our emotional memory and bring back memories of a past time.

And so, today, ricciarelli. The recipe comes from the wonderful (I weigh my words :)) blog of Juls’ Kitchen, which I consider the reference standard for all Tuscan recipes. Moreover, Giulia’s blog is always an enchanting view on my beloved Tuscany :) 

Ricciarelli (recipe by Juls’ Kitchen, with some modifications)

(Doses for 15-20) cookies)

  • 200 g of almond flour

  • 200 g of icing sugar (+ as needed to shape the cookies)

  • 2 egg whites

  • a couple of drops of lemon juice

  • 1 tea spoon of vanilla extract

  • 1 tea spoon of almond flavouring extract

  • 1 tea spoon of orange flavouring extract

The evening, whip the egg whites (mines were almost firm) with the lemon juice, and incorporate the icing sugar, by mixing gently. Add all the other ingredients and knead till you obtain an homogeneous dough. Wrap it into some paper film and let it rest in the fridge for 12 h.

The morning after, sprinkles a bit of icing sugar on a table (or working surface). Take the dough from the fridge and roll it to obtain a roll of 3.5-4 cm in diameter. Cut roll into disks of about 1 cm thickness and give them an oval shape. Place each cookie on an oven covered with parchment paper. Wet lightly the surface of each cookie with a bit of water and sprinkle them with icing sugar.

Bake them in preheated non-convected oven at 160 C for 18 min. As Giulia explains, ricciarelli are soft once removed form the oven, but they tend to get firmer as they cool down.