The colorful carnival cookies are butter shortbread flavored with orange and lemon zest, decorated on top with strawberry glaze in vibrant hues. That’s why they are so festive and overwhelming, perfect for Mardi Gras or any day you want to be cheerful by eating something delicious and fun. The shortbread recipe is traditional, but I chose excellent raw materials to make it a masterpiece: organic spelt flour from Viterbo, fresh organic eggs, and artisanal butter, which I flavored with orange and lemon zest the day before kneading. This step, which may seem unnecessary, is fundamental because it allows the butter to capture all the aroma of the zest, rich in essential oils. The cookies will be very fragrant even after baking.
I needed a truly captivating cookie to participate in an extraordinary cooking challenge. The Italian Food Blogger Association is participating in the 2024 edition of the Foiano Carnival in the province of Arezzo. Thirty members eager to play will challenge each other once again, and we’re not just talking about recipes – those are needed, of course, because there is no carnival without delicious sweets – but also about funny stories.
The king of the Foiano Carnival, in fact, is named Giocondo, and every year he bids farewell to the carnival with his funeral, when he is burned in the Piazza Alta of Foiano, taking away the beautiful and ugly events of the past year. I thought of a different ending for him, and these cookies are part of the story
- Difficulty: Medium
- Cost: Economical
- Rest time: 30 Minutes
- Preparation time: 2 Hours
- Portions: 8
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Carnival
Ingredients
For the shortcrust pastry, I used organic einkorn spelt flour from the La Turchina Farm in Viterbo. Spelt is an ancient grain ideal for kneading cookies and pies. It is a healthy, whole-grain flour rich in nutrients beneficial to health. Additionally, since we’ll be adding glaze later, I halved the sugar dose in this dough.
The number of cookies you will get depends on the shapes you choose: I used a set of fruit-shaped cookie cutters of different sizes and made about thirty.
- 7 oz butter (artisanal or good quality)
- 1 lemon and 1 orange (untreated-only the zest)
- 2.5 cups einkorn spelt flour (organic)
- 0.25 cup sugar, also cane
- 7 oz butter (citrus-flavored)
- 2 egg yolks (organic eggs)
- 2 egg whites (organic eggs)
- 2.8 cups powdered sugar (or more, if needed)
- 0.35 oz food coloring (natural and assorted colors)
- 3 drops strawberry essence (optional)
For these cookies, several tools will be useful for decorating with icing: a black food-safe marker and a decorating pen, or better, two.
- 1 dessert decorating pen
- 1 Food-safe marker
Let’s Get Cooking
Remember to flavor the butter in advance, at least twelve hours before using it.
Let the butter soften in a bowl outside the refrigerator: if it’s good quality, it will be rich in fat and become soft quickly. Then, after washing and drying them, finely grate the zest of one orange and one lemon directly into the bowl. Mix with a fork, ensuring the mixture becomes homogeneous. Cover with plastic wrap or, preferably, with a food-grade bee wrap, and refrigerate for the set time.
However, the steps are identical if you decide to knead by hand.
Combine sugar and flour in the bowl of the stand mixer, fitting the paddle attachment. Turn it on and add the cold butter in pieces: ours will be wonderfully citrusy!
Knead quickly until you achieve a crumbly consistency, then add the egg yolks, one at a time, making sure to save the egg whites for the glaze.
Stop as soon as the dough becomes a mass. Then roll out the shortcrust pastry on the appropriate mat or between two sheets of parchment paper, not too thin but not too thick: about three-quarters of an inch will be fine, and after resting in the refrigerator for at least thirty minutes, it will allow us to finish spreading it and cut it precisely.
After resting in the fridge, the shortcrust pastry will be ready to work with. Roll it out with a floured rolling pin to a thickness of half an inch or slightly more. Carnival cookies cannot be too thin, as they must withstand the manipulation required for decorating without breaking.
Then flour the molds we have chosen and cut quickly, pressing the cutter into the dough with some force and precision. The cookie will come off easily. Place it directly on the baking sheet, where we have placed the silicone mat that replaces parchment paper.
Continue this way until the dough is finished. Preheat the static oven to 340°F. While the oven heats, keep the cookies in the fridge: the thermal shock favors both their crispness and the shape retention.
Finally, bake for ten to twelve minutes and wait for the cookies to cool completely before decorating them.
Preparing the glaze is very simple. Just mix powdered sugar and egg white until you get the right consistency: the mixture should be fluid but not too much. To avoid mistakes, just gradually add the ingredients and adjust, if necessary, after testing. The glaze dries in contact with air: you may need to add a teaspoon of egg white along the way. After dividing the white glaze into several small bowls, add the different colors and stir carefully. The color takes a few minutes to dissolve completely, then we can start decorating armed with creativity.
If you have doubts, you will find all the explanations later, in the Queen’s Secrets.
The colorful carnival cookies are the recipe I chose to tell the story of the king of the Foiano Carnival in the kitchen, the oldest in Italy. Along with me, many other food bloggers from AIFB will compete to help King Giocondo. The first traces of the Foiano Carnival date back to 1536, and since then, this historic event has transformed and modernized without losing its identity. Today there are four workshops that build the floats and characters for the parades throughout the year: they are Bombolo, Nottambuli, Azzurro, and Rustici. The carnival artists work with glue, colors, and complex mechanisms to ensure their float is the most stunning of the year. What never changes is King Giocondo, a rag and straw dummy with a crown and a medal. Giocondo rules for a year and then ends up burned, the last night of the carnival, taking away the year that passes. Immediately after, he rises charred, and his reign begins again, already knowing he will meet the same fate soon. Do we want to change this ending? The workshops inspired me to decide to prepare many colorful cookies that made me work long hours with brushes and colors. The cookies have a fantasy story in which Giocondo, finally, finds his redemption:
King Giocondo was a cheerful young man. He had to be, he was the king of the carnival. Deep in his heart, however, he hid two sorrows that seemed never to be resolved. The first was being burned every year: what a struggle to have to reorganize every time and remain faithful to oneself! The second was a terribly unhappy love…
If I’ve piqued your interest and you want to know how it will end, read:
The Queen’s Secrets
Now I will explain in detail all the secrets you need to achieve beautiful and truly delicious cookies.
The flavored butter is the secret of these cookies, indeed the fat captures aromas and scents remarkably, and so butter, cream, milk, and oil are our best allies when we want to give a preparation a delicate, persistent, and unmistakable aroma.
Always remember that the cookies should be cut when the shortcrust pastry is cold. You can re-knead several times, remembering, however, that to have a precise cut, the shortcrust pastry must be cold and the molds floured. It will therefore be necessary to repeat the rest in the refrigerator if needed.
The glaze is the fun part, which unleashes creativity and allows you to choose designs and colors just like in a carnival workshop in Foiano. To obtain an aromatic glaze, use a few drops of lemon, orange juice, or natural essence. Keep in mind that citrus fruits color, and the white glaze will not be pure white anymore; the essences do not, but they must be of good quality or they will cause problems, and they should be used sparingly. I used a few drops of strawberry flavor.
With the edible marker, we can draw the outlines and details, for everything else, we use the dessert pens filled with colored glaze and the brush.
With the edible marker, we can draw the outlines and details, for everything else, we use the dessert pens filled with colored glaze and the brush.
With the edible marker, we can draw the outlines and details, for everything else, we use the dessert pens filled with colored glaze and the brush.
With the edible marker, we can draw the outlines and details, for everything else, we use the dessert pens filled with colored glaze and the brush.
