Cornmeal Cookies, Italian Style [G.F., Dairy Free] - SugarLoveSpices (2024)

Cornmeal Cookies, Italian Style, are inspired by a famous Italian cookie made of cornmeal, with a soft interior and a crunchy exterior, perfect in the morning to be dunked in a cappuccino or tea, in pure Italian fashion.

Song of the day: Yellow Ledbetter - Pearl Jam.

Such a beautiful deep yellow color, theseCornmeal Cookies, Italian style,round and bright as a full sun that shines high in a Spring blue sky.

Not the case, unfortunately, on this side of the world, where grayand gloomy skies, with a touch of white from random snowflakes, continue to unfold one day after another. We are in full Spring as per season, but nobody reminded Mother Nature of that, 'cause she seems lostin her thoughts and forgot to switch the season channel.

For those of you that follow my ramblings, this impossible, dreadful weather is affecting me profoundly, and I cannot help but talk about it and all the ways I contrive to hold it together. In Rome Spring has started early, here, by the time Spring will come (they will call it Summer, but for me, it's not), give it a couple of months and Winter will come again (taking Autumn right out of the picture). It is not only the lack of warmth that affects me, it is also the lack of color all around me. It seems I am trapped in a sepia cartoon.

Baking is one of my cures for the gray blues, and today, it's Cornmeal Cookies, Italian style time.

If you know something about Italian families and their breakfast habits, you know that the colazione (breakfast) is very dissimilar from the North American savory "feast" with a high protein content. There are no eggs at breakfast, eggs are consumed at lunch or supper, and definitely no bacon, pancetta is reserved to making Carbonara. From North to South Italy, typically, breakfast is made of a beverage, like cappuccino or caffe’ espresso,occasionally tea, orzo, or ginseng (which has gained popularity lately), with something sweet to eat, like cake, cookies, pastries, brioches, croissants, bread and jam/chocolate spread, or in Sicilian-style, brioche and gelato or granita. Many people like to eat out for breakfast on their way to work or school, but not at a drive-through, instead, they stop in the plentifulbars& cafés for a cappuccino and pastry, often standing at the counter.When at home, cereal in milk or yogurt isan option, although not as common, while homemade or store bought pastries and small breakfast cookies are king. I have made some breakfast cookies before, here, here, and here and explained that they are a family favorite. We all love to dunk cookies in our cappuccino, but my dad has his own way: he breaks all the cookies that he can possibly fit inhis big caffella*te mug and then eat the soaked cookies by the spoonful. A pleasure to watch 🙂 .

The cookies that I'm reproducing here today, theCornmeal Cookies, Italian style, are my effort to try and recreate a popular gluten-free, delicious cookies called Munaretti (#nosponsor), delightfullycrunchy, with a lovely lemon hint, a sugar top, and the unmistakable brittle texture.

I found few Italian recipes that wanted to recreate the same cookies. In some, the cornmeal is mixed with all-purpose flour (or 00 flour, to be precise, as in most Italian baking), in others, the way I chose wanting to keep it gluten-free, the cornmeal is mixed with brown rice flour. Some use butter, some olive oil, and although the original cookies seem to have a buttery taste and texture, I decided to go dairy free and use e.v.o. oil, instead. Another huge difference ismade by the type of cornmeal you're going to use. The finer the better. I had a very coarse one, and the texture of my Cornmeal Cookies, which I love, by the way, is a bit gritty and very similar to polenta. I like my Cornmeal Cookies very crunchy, like the original, so I tried to roll the dough very thin and to bake them longer.

They are easy to make and they have very few ingredients, the longest part is to let the dough rest in the fridge before rolling it out and cutting. You can have fun and experiment with different shapes, I had fun using the "homemade" stamp, kind present from my dear cousins.

If you feel adventurous and want to bake some gluten free cookies Italian style, hope you give this recipe a try and enjoy your Cornmeal Cookieswith your loved ones.

Song of the day: Yellow Ledbetter - Pearl Jam.

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