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    Italian Christmas Cookies

    By | Shine Food – Mon, Dec 19, 2011 12:34 PM EST

    Italian-Americans love to show off their cooking, and at Christmastime in our Italian-American household, cookies were a major production. My grandmother baked nonstop in the days leading up to the holidays. She made Americanized chocolate chip and sugar cookies, but her specialty was traditional Italian cookies. She used a pastry bag to shape cherry almond stars and airy pignoli cookies, and an ice cream scoop to make perfectly round butter cookies, which she blanketed with rainbow sprinkles. They looked so nice that Uncle Joe used to tell her to pick up a shift at DeLuca's, the local bakery. My favorites were her rainbow cookies, which we called stoplights: three thin cakes-one red, one green, one white, like the Italian flag-stacked on top of one another and cut into cubes, with raspberry jam between the layers and a veneer of semisweet chocolate on top.

    Some years the kids would help her make the cookies, but what we really loved was helping her wrap them as gifts. The goal was to eat as many as you packaged. We wrapped the piles of cookies in cellophane right on Grandma's china. If you received a gift of cookies, and you wanted to get another one next year, you made sure to wash and return the dish. Otherwise, you were off the list for good.


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    Recipe for Sprinkle Cookies
    Makes about 3 dozen.

    INGREDIENTS
    1 1/2 cups flour, plus more as needed
    1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
    1⁄2 tsp. kosher salt
    12 tbsp. unsalted butter, softened
    3⁄4 cup sugar
    1 egg
    2 tsp. vanilla extract
    Zest of 1⁄2 lemon
    1 egg white, lightly beaten
    1⁄2 cup multi-colored sprinkles

    INSTRUCTIONS
    1. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl; set aside. In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar on medium-high speed of a mixer until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add vanilla, egg, and lemon zest, and beat until smooth; add dry ingredients, and beat until just combined. Using a 1-oz. ice scream scoop or 2 tablespoons, portion and shape dough into 1" balls; place balls 2" apart on parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Lightly flour the bottom of a 1⁄4 measuring cup, and press each ball into a flat disk; chill disks for 30 minutes.

    2. Heat oven to 375°. Place sprinkles in a bowl; set asdie. Using a pastry brush, lightly brush tops of cookie disks with egg white and then press into sprinkles to adhere completely. Return cookies to baking sheets, and bake, rotating baking sheets top to bottom and front to back halfway through cooking, until set and set and lightly browned on the bottom, about 10 minutes. Let cool before serving.


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