Italian Easter Cookies
Find more great recipes like this in The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion.
Dough
2 tablespoons (7/8 ounce) vegetable oil
3 tablespoons (1 1/2 ounces) unsalted butter, melted
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup (4 ounces) confectioners' or glazing sugar
2 1/2 cups (10 5/8 ounces)King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
Icing
1 cup (4 ounces) confectioners' or glazing sugar
4 teaspoons milk
4 teaspoons light corn syrup
Beat together the oil, butter, eggs, vanilla, salt, baking powder, and sugar until smooth. Add the flour, beating until smooth. Refrigerate the dough for at least one hour, or overnight.
Scoop the dough into 2-teaspoon-size (1/2-ounce) balls; a teaspoon cookie scoop works perfectly here. Roll the balls into logs about 4 inches long and about 1/2-inch in diameter. Coil into doughnut shapes, leaving a small hole in the middle.
Place the shaped cookies on lightly greased baking sheets, leaving about 1 inch between them. Bake them in a preheated 350°F oven for about 18 minutes. They may have the merest hint of golden color on top, but they definitely won't be brown. Remove them from the oven, and transfer to a rack to cool completely before icing.
To ice the cookies: Put 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar into each of four bowls. Add 1 teaspoon milk and 1 teaspoon corn syrup to each bowl. Stir until you've made a soft, spreadable icing, adding more milk if necessary. Tint the icing in each bowl a different color. Dip the top of each cookie in one of the icings. Sprinkle with sugar decorations. Allow the frosting to harden before storing the cookies. Yield: 3 1/2 dozen cookies.
Reviews
03/14/2010
These cookies were not the best. Nothing special and not worth the time put into them.
05/23/2009
I love this recipe! This is my second time making these! They are so delicious and so easy and fun to make! I just made some for Memorial Day weekend using red, white, and blue icing with red, white, and blue sprinkles with stars for on top! So much fun and they turned out really cute! Thanks King Arthur for this fabulous recipe!
04/09/2009
I made my first batch before reading the comments. It took well over an hour to roll out the circles, which was a painful process! As commented earlier they were rather bland. I would recommend increasing your vanilla by at least 1/3rd the recommended. With my second batch I made them with Almond extract, and again increased the amount by 1/3rd. With this batch I made the dough into balls, and then flattened them and pinched them in the middle almost all the was through. This was a faster process than the rolling and making doughnuts! Saved me 45 minutes and also made it easier to apply the frosting/glaze. I simply drizzled it onto the cookie with a teaspoon! Overall though, very yummy... I just had to put more flavor into these for my kids to want to eat them!
04/08/2009
I loved this recipe! I first found it in the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion Cookbook (which I would HIGHLY recommend). I had been borrowing the book from my local library and just had to buy it because I was using it so much! These cookies are so cute and very easy to make! You can make them any color and add any sort of decorations your heart desires to coordinate with holiday's and parties. I did not find that they were flavorless at all. I thought they were great! I love the idea of a previous commenter and a KAF representative who suggested using cocoa and making them chocolate! Yum! My little brothers just loved their "donut" shape and thought that was neat! I want to try making them so they "look" like donuts (ex: chocolate glaze, powdered sugar, etc.). I think that would be fun! These are great for any time of the year, not just for Easter! Thanks King Arthur for this great versatile recipe!
04/07/2009
I just sent in a comment, very positime, but not on this page but on this web site. I hope you find it. Sorry for the confusion.
The cookie is soft enough on the 2nd day but I did add one extra tablespoon of "Smart Balance for baking". That is the type butter ingredient that I used. Plus I dropped a 1/2 teaspoon salt out of the recipe because the Smart Balance has salt. I thought they were perfect and pretty. What do you think about adding some cocoa to make a chocolate cookie? I think I would leave the vanilla in if I did. A perfect non- fragile Easter cookie to send across country to my grandchildren. Now I have to make another batch for my husband and the guests that are arriving soon.
Thank you
We have not experimented making these chocolate but I think you will be fine if you subsitute 1/4 of the confectionery sugar with 1/4 cup of cocoa. Joan@bakershotline
03/24/2009
My maiden name is one of those Italian names that is harder to spell than it is to pronounce. I have been making Italian cookies for over thirty years...sorry KAF but these are by far not Italian cookies.
03/23/2009
I love these cookies with coffee to dunk. thanks for the recipe. Carole Fletcher
03/22/2009
It took a little time to refrigerate, and roll. These hard little cookies had little taste. I added a couple of drops of lemon extract to the icing when I realized it wasn't very good plain. It had a raw, powdered sugar taste. I know Italian cookies are usually not very sweet, but these sure needed something. I should have added some kind of flavor to the cookie dough, too. No one liked them. These are not worth the time involved; I would not make them again.
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