Italian Cuisine
Cookies ingredients:
- 3 large eggs.
- 2 cups sugar.
- 1 cup vegetable
oil.
- 1 tsp vanilla
extract.
- 4 tsp baking powder.
- ½ tsp salt.
- 1 cup whole milk.
- 6 cups all-purpose
flour.
- Peach jam for
filling.
Decorating
ingredients:
- Peach liqueur.
- Yellow & red
food coloring.
- Superfine sugar.
- Mint leaves.
Cookies directions:
- Preheat oven
to 350 degrees F.
- Line 2 baking
sheets with parchment paper.
- Place the
eggs and sugar in a bowl and beat with an electric mixer about
3 minutes or until light.
- Add the oil
and beat until creamy, then mix in the milk and vanilla.
- Mix the flour
with the baking powder and salt, then add this to the batter and beat just
until it is combined.
- Take a small
amount of batter in your hands, and roll into a ball about 1 ½ inches for
large, ¾ of an inch for the small sized cookies and place these on the baking
sheets.
- Continue to
roll out all of the batter into balls, and then bake for about 15 to 20 minutes
or until very light brown on the bottom.
- Leave it to cool
well.
Filling directions:
- Use a sharp
knife, and cut out a circle at the bottom of the cookie removing the cookie
centers and placing these in a bowl.
- Be careful
not to cut completely through the cookies, but you need to make space for the
filling.
- Once you have
cut the bottom of each cookie, break up the cookie pieces you have cut out into
fine crumbs.
- Add enough of
the peach jam to the cookie crumbs until you have a sticky filling.
- Carefully
fill each cookie, and then matching cookies or shape and size, place 2 cookies
together, using the peach mixture as glue to hold the cookies together.
- Clean any
peach jam that may ooze from the seams.
Decorate
directions:
- Place about ½
cup of the peach liqueur in 2 separate bowls, and color one yellow and the
other red.
- In a third
bowl, place the superfine sugar.
- Carefully dip
each cookie pair into the red mixture first ¾ of the way up the cookie, then
dip the other end in the yell mixture.
- If you dipped
the yellow end briefly in the red liquid it created a more natural looking
color.
- Gently blot
the cookie with paper towels to remove most of the liquid, then immediately
roll the cookie in the sugar.
- Place the
finished cookie on a sheet of waxed paper to dry and continue to color the rest
of the cookies in the same manner.
- Once the
cookies have dried, you can insert a couple of mint leaves and a whole clove to
resemble a peach.