Italian Anise Cookies

Hi everyone! Nice to meet you, I feel like I know you all since my wifey (aka Boston Sweetie) tends to drop my name in a post every now and then (aka "Hubs"). You can call me Boston Sweetie Hubs or
B-hubs for short.

I am not ashamed to say that the 25 days of Christmas this year has made one of the most delicious Decembers that I can remember. Tonight, I decided to keep the daily trend going with one of my favorite types of cookies - Anise! Inspired by some of my favorite North End bakeries like Bovas, Mike's and Modern - I decided to save myself the walk and make my own.

After browsing a few recipes online to inspire myself, I found the one - look no further than Food.com.

Check out the picture of my finished product below - they look good huh?

HoHoHo these look good!

The recipe consisted of two parts - Making the cookie batter and making the icing - which gave me two bowls of extra batter bits to eat....

Anyways....

The first part consisted of mixing a stick of butter, eggs, sugar, anise, and milk- to create a nice anise fluffy sugar mixture which now needed some flour mixture. The flour mixture consisted of some baking powder and ....Flour! After about 10 minutes of mixing with the magic of the Kitchen Aid - we had some nice fluffy anise cookie batter.  Using a cookie scooper to portion - I created some nice round dollops of cookie batter and into the oven they went.  Ten minutes they were done.

The finishing touch was a mixture of confectionary sugar, milk and a drop of anise for the glaze. Simply take the baked cookies and dip them into the glaze, finish with sprinkles and we have Anise cookies!

Merry Christmas!

Only 14 more days 'til Christmas everyone- enjoy the cookies and I'm sure I'll be speaking to you soon again.

You can access the recipe here.

Bye for now,
B-hubs

Italian Ricotta Cookies

It's day 5 of my 25 Days of Cookies series, what do you all think so far?!

Today's cookie is one I tried at work.  My cube-mate Stephanie of Just Us Gals blog brought these in to share with the office.  She broke them out nice and early, and I hoarded them at our desk until I could take a couple pictures (and a couple cookies for myself, hah!)

These are great; ingredients are simple and you likely have almost everything you need at home, and they aren't overly sweet so you can have them for breakfast like I did, or dessert.  The cookies come together quickly, and the following recipe makes about 6 dozen.  If you can't see yourself eating that many cookies, bring the extras to work.  Your coworkers will love you, trust me!

Italian Ricotta Cookies
Baked by Stephanie's roommate, Hayley

Recipe by Hayley's friend Liz' grandmother who is from Italy

Thank you to both Hayley and Liz for sharing your cookies and your recipe!!

Blend 2 sticks of margarine, 2 cups of sugar and 15oz of ricotta cheese.  Add 2 beaten eggs, 2 tsp. of vanilla, 4 cups of four, 1 tsp of baking soda, and 1 tsp of salt.  Drop by teaspoon on a cookie sheet.  Bake at 350F for about 15 minutes or until the bottoms are brown. 

The original recipe calls for an icing glaze made by mixing powdered sugar and slowly mixing in nonfat milk until the powdered sugar turns into a thick liquid.  Drizzle the glaze on top of the cookies once they have cooled, then sprinkle with coconut shavings.  If you don't like coconut, powdered sugar on top (like the ones pictured) tastes great too!