Homemade canestrelli, grandma’s foolproof recipe, with tips and secrets to obtain perfect cookies, crumbly and fragrant like they used to be.
Canestrelli are delicate shortcrust cookies, made with the yolks of hard-boiled eggs, typical of Italian tradition. Best known in the Ligurian version, they were baked in kitchens everywhere, each family with their own memory and recipe.
This is the family canestrelli recipe, simple and authentic, the one that was never missing at grandma’s, ready to welcome unexpected guests.
Canestrelli are extremely crumbly cookies dusted with powdered sugar, typical of Liguria and Piedmont, and appear in many variations depending on where they are made. Here you’ll find the classic canestrelli recipe, the most widespread and well-known, the Ligurian one, the same shortbreads that used to scent kitchen cupboards.
Small, snow-white, with their unmistakable flower shape and a hole in the center, canestrelli have tempted me since childhood. After buying them for years, I finally decided to make them at home, following grandma’s recipe.
The homemade canestrelli recipe is simple and uses ingredients we usually already have in the pantry: flour, butter, potato starch, powdered sugar and eggs.
Their peculiarity, however, lies in two fundamental elements that make these cookies so crumbly:
the use of hard-boiled egg yolks in place of raw egg and the presence of potato starch. This shortcrust is called pasta ovis mollis, typical of traditional pastry.
Canestrelli are excellent for breakfast, as an afternoon snack or any time of the day, and are also perfect to give as a gift at Christmas or Easter, wrapped in boxes or bags made with care, like they used to be.
If you love traditional cookies, on the blog you can also find:
But now it’s time to get your hands in the dough — let’s go to the kitchen. Before that, remember that if you want to stay updated on new recipes you can follow my Facebook page and my Instagram profile.
Also take a look:
- Difficulty: Very easy
- Cost: Very inexpensive
- Rest time: 1 Hour
- Preparation time: 10 Minutes
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients to make original canestrelli
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (type 00)
- 1 1/3 cups unsalted butter (about 300 g / ~10.6 oz)
- 1 3/4 cups potato starch
- 1 1/4 cups powdered (confectioners') sugar
- 6 egg yolks (from hard-boiled eggs)
- to taste lemon zest
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- to taste powdered (confectioners') sugar (for dusting)
Tools
- Oven
- Baking sheet
- Cookie cutter
Steps
Place the eggs in a pot, cover with water and cook for 8 minutes from the moment the water boils. Drain, let cool, peel and reserve only the yolks. In a bowl combine the flour, butter, powdered sugar, potato starch, vanilla extract and lemon zest. Mix roughly and turn out onto the work surface.
Work the mixture until you obtain a homogeneous dough, flatten it, add the cold yolks mashed as finely and evenly as possible (you can also blend them or pass them through a sieve) and knead. Wrap the pasta ovis mollis in plastic wrap and let it rest 30 minutes in the fridge.
Take the dough back, lightly dust a sheet of parchment paper with a little flour and roll the dough out to about 3/8 inch (1 cm) thickness — use only a little flour to prevent sticking to the rolling pin.
Chill for 30 minutes and once the sheet is firm, cut the cookies with a flower-shaped cutter about 1 3/16 inches (3 cm). Make a small hole in the center (I used a piping tip) and bake in a preheated conventional oven at 338°F for 18–20 minutes, taking care that they do not brown.
Remove from the oven and let cool completely on a rack, then dust with powdered sugar.
Knead again the remaining shortcrust and repeat the operation, allowing the dough sheet to rest in the fridge each time.
You can serve canestrelli on any occasion and also as a tea pastry. Store them in small bags or in tin boxes for 2–3 weeks, but the longer they sit the more they will lose their characteristic crispness.
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