Comfort food: Italian biscuits

We call these ‘cornbread cookies.’  There are no corn products in them.

My mother used to make these every year at Christmas when I was little, and she’d glaze and top them with red and green decorator’s sugar.  The recipe yield is 90-100 cookies, more than our family could eat over one holiday, so she would store some unfrosted cookies in the freezer.  When I got older and lived on my own, she’d send me back to New Jersey after the holidays with a freezer bag or two of my own stash.

I had a bag that lingered long-forgotten in my freezer (I’m talking a year or more), and Mark found them one day when I was out.  That evening he told me he had eaten some cornbread that was in the freezer.  I was pretty certain I didn’t have any cornbread, and he was pretty certain he knew better since he’d eaten it.  Thus, these will forever be known as ‘cornbread cookies,’ although I really don’t think they taste anything like cornbread.

What they do taste like is moist, dense deliciousness, thanks to the Ricotta cheese.  They’re still amazing months (or years) after you’ve put them in the freezer and forgotten that they’re there.

Italian biscuits:

Cream well:

-1/2 lb butter

-2 cups sugar

Add 3 eggs and beat well.

Add:

-1 lb Ricotta cheese

-2 tsp vanilla

-4 cups flour

-1 tsp baking soda

-1 tsp salt

Drop by small teaspoons onto greased cookies sheet.  Bake 10-15 minutes at 350 F.  When cool, can be iced and dipped in sprinkles.

Icing: confectioner’s sugar and milk to make a glue-like mixture.  Almond or anise flavoring can be added to icing.

So that’s one of my childhood favorites.  I substituted half vanilla, half Fiori di Sicilia to give them a little citrus kick.  It probably should have been more like 3/4:1/4 because the Fiori di Sicilia is very strong, but there haven’t been any complaints around here.  I also made them more like large tablespoons of batter and extended the baking time because I really didn’t want to make 100.  I ended up with about three dozen, and obviously I was too lazy to make frosting of any sort.  Two days later, I think we may be down to our last dozen.