The Ricciarelli are soft cookies typical of Sienese pastry, made with few and simple ingredients like almond flour, egg whites, and powdered sugar.
With a nearly melt-in-your-mouth texture, these aromatic marzipan cookies are perfect for gifting to friends and family during the Christmas season, but are now made all year round.
There are many small variations of the Ricciarelli recipe, and today I wanted to write for you step by step the simplest and quickest version, easy to execute even for beginners in the kitchen.
The most important step not to overlook is letting the dough rest for at least 12 hours in the refrigerator, so that these sweets release an intense almond and orange aroma and flavor with every bite.
As for the preparation itself, it will take you at most 15 minutes in total.
Follow me, you will find the step-by-step RECIPE and even the complete VIDEO of these wonderful sweets.
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- Difficulty: Very easy
- Cost: Medium
- Rest time: 12 Hours
- Preparation time: 10 Minutes
- Portions: makes about 10-11 ricciarelli
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Autumn, Winter and Spring, Christmas
Ingredients for preparing RICCIARELLI
- 3/4 cup almond flour (or peeled almonds to grind very finely)
- 3/4 cup vanilla powdered sugar (+ extra to dust the surface)
- 1 egg white (from a medium egg)
- grated zest of half an orange
- almond essence (a few drops, optional)
Tools
- Hand whisk
- Baking pan
- Sieve
- Grater
Steps to prepare RICCIARELLI
Take the egg and extract the egg white, being careful not to break the yolk.
Pour the egg white into a bowl, add the grated zest of half an orange (make sure it’s an orange with edible peel) and start beating the egg white with a hand whisk, preferably a small one; stop when the egg white is lightly whipped, meaning it has slightly increased in volume and formed air bubbles on the surface.
At this point, add the almond flour and the powdered sugar, previously sieved.
[If you bought peeled almonds, grind them into flour using a mixer].
Mix everything well with a spoon, until you obtain a homogeneous, soft but moldable mixture.
Transfer it onto plastic wrap for food, compact the mixture well and give it its initial sausage shape, then place in the refrigerator for at least 12 hours, up to a maximum of two days.
I recommend preparing the mixture for your ricciarelli the night before (it will truly take you at most five minutes) and completing the preparation the next day.
After the 12 hours in the refrigerator, sprinkle a little cornstarch or cornstarch on your work surface and, using your hands, finish forming a sausage with the dough (it should have a diameter of about 1.2 inches).
With a smooth-bladed knife or a dough scraper, divide the sausage into about 10-11 parts each weighing about 0.7 oz.
Shape your ricciarelli (the shape should be like a ‘rice grain’) directly on a baking tray lined with parchment paper (watch the VIDEO if you have any doubts about the procedure, please).
Dust the surface of the ricciarelli with plenty of powdered sugar and bake them in a static oven preheated to 302°F for about 15 minutes in the center rack.
The ricciarelli should remain light in color and don’t worry, when you take them out they will still seem too soft but will reach the perfect consistency after about an hour!
NB: once out of the oven, place them very gently using a spatula on a rack (if you have one) to cool them properly.
And here are your RICCIARELLI, soft and very fragrant!
Tips and Storage
If you want to add an extra touch of flavor and aroma to your ricciarelli, buy peeled almonds and, before grinding them finely with the mixer, lightly toast them in a pan.
Ricciarelli can be stored safely for 20-30 days if stored well in a cookie jar or tin box.
