Wine Cookies

Made with white wine and a few other simple ingredients these lightly sweetened and crunchy wine cookies are what your glass of afternoon wine has been missing. 

Wine Cookies

As if there weren’t enough reasons to love the Italian way of life, now I’ve been introduced (via my friend, Rosemary’s, new cookbook) to wine cookies and my appreciation for all things Italian has gone up yet another notch. Made with white wine and a few other simple ingredients these lightly sweetened and crunchy cookies are what your glass of afternoon wine has been missing.

If you’ve been following along the last several years you might have seen some mentions about Rosemary pop up on this here blog. Her blog, An Italian in My Kitchen, never ceases to be a source of inspiration for me. My favorites include her lemon bread, pizza dough, and chocolate pudding cake but mostly it’s our friendship – one that spans across the internet – that I value the most. We’ve never met in person (she lives just outside Rome, Italy and I’m all the way in the US), but for the last four-ish years our friendship has grown through a modern-day penpal arrangement – through emails, direct messages, and the occasional coffee chat over Skype.

And so, just over a year ago, I was thrilled when Rosemary signed with the same publisher I did and got to work on her own book. We had the unique opportunity to work on our books at the same time and she was such a source of support for me through the process. Writing – book writing, especially – is often a lonely endeavor so to have a friend to lean on through the process was priceless.

Her book, Authentic Italian Desserts – 75 Traditional Favorites Made Easy – is filled with all of her favorite Italian desserts, many of which were handed down to her from her Italian mother-in-law. Her photos are gorgeous and the recipes are equally as beautiful, but easy to execute, which I appreciate. Baking does not come easy for me mostly because I have little patience for things like waiting for bread to rise, or butter to soften, or dough to be kneaded to just the right texture, but Rosemary’s recipes always seem to come together effortlessly. She does a great job making sure we all feel successful in the kitchen.

My copy is already smudged with flour and when I tried the wine cookies I knew this was the recipe to share with all of you. It’s a cookie for grown-ups, a lightly sweet treat to serve alongside the other snacky-treats at happy hour and they couldn’t be easier to make.

Some Ingredients You’ll Need

• The cookies’ star ingredient is white wine. Rosemary doesn’t specify, so choose one that you like to drink. I used some Moscato, an Italian sweet wine, that was leftover from Thanksgiving. The wine flavors the cookies and gives them a little bit of an acidic punch.
• You only need one bowl to make the dough which is just a combo of the wine, flour, sugar, vegetable oil, and baking powder. Mix it all together with a fork until the dough comes together.
• The dough is quite sticky so you may need extra flour when you turn it out onto the board. Knead it a few times until the dough is soft and no longer sticky.
• I divided the dough into twenty parts and rolled each into, as Rosemary describes, chubby ropes before bringing the ends together to create a circle. Each cookie gets a coating of sugar before they go into the oven.
• I started checking on my wine cookies around the 20-minute mark and pulled them out once they were lightly golden.

Be sure to check out Rosemary’s book (available wherever books are sold) and happy cooking-making!

More Cookie Recipes

• Snickerdoodles
• Molasses Cookies
• Gingersnaps
• Cantucci (Italian Almond Cookies)

Wine Cookies

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• Author: Rosemary Molloy
• Total Time: 50 minutes
• Yield: approximately 20 cookies 1x

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Description

These are another one of those delicious treats that my mother-in-law introduced me to: crunchy and not too sweet, made with last year’s wine and usually dunked in a glass of wine or espresso. You knew it was fall when she started baking these treats in her wood-burning stove. — from Authentic Italian Desserts by Rosemary Molloy

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Ingredients

Scale 1x2x3x

• 1/2 cup (120 ml) white wine
• 1/3 cup (80 ml) vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup (96 g) granulated sugar, plus extra for coating
• Pinch of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 – 1 teaspoon ground anise (optional)
• 2 1/4 cup (225 g) all-purpose flour

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Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F (177ºC), and line a 10 x 14-inch baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. In a medium bowl, combine the white wine, oil, sugar, salt, baking soda, and anise (if using). Mix with a fork until well combined. Gradually add the flour, mixing with the fork until it all comes together. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and knead gently, approximately 10 times. The dough should be soft, so be sure to not work it too much.
3. Cut off a little bit of dough at a time, roll it into a small chubby rope about 5 inches (13 cm) long and bring the ends together to form a circle. Dip the circles in the additional sugar and place them on the prepared baking sheets.  Bake the cookies for approximately 30 minutes, or until golden in color. Let the cookies cool completely before serving.

Notes

Recipe excerpted from Authentic Italian Desserts by Rosemary Molloy. Recipe published here with permission from the author.

• Prep Time: 20 minutes
• Cook Time: 30 minutes
• Category: Dessert
• Method: Bake
• Cuisine: Italian

Nutrition

• Serving Size: 1 cookie
• Calories: 165
• Sugar: 5g
• Sodium: 116.8mg
• Fat: 11g
• Saturated Fat: 8.9g
• Unsaturated Fat: 1.5g
• Trans Fat: 0g
• Carbohydrates: 15.9g
• Fiber: 0.4g
• Protein: 1.5g
• Cholesterol: 0mg

Keywords: ciambelline al vino, wine cookies