The red wine cookies or red wine biscuits are rustic, crunchy, and delicious cookies, widely popular especially in the Roman Castles area and throughout the Lazio countryside, where they are served at the end of the meal accompanied by a good glass of wine, into which they are traditionally dipped. Without butter and eggs, red wine cookies have the appearance of classic grandma’s cookies and are often prepared ‘by eye’, measuring the liquids with a glass and adding as much flour as needed to make the dough workable.
In my recipe for red wine cookies, however, I provide you with all the precise measurements, especially because if you want to make gluten-free red wine cookies you will need to mix two different flours – corn and rice – in an exact proportion. The gluten-free red wine cookies will be a bit more difficult to work with because without eggs or butter the dough tends to break a little, but once baked they will taste just like traditional red wine cookies. In many recipes, the dough of red wine cookies is flavored with anise seeds: if you don’t like them or don’t have them, you can omit them.
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- Difficulty: Very easy
- Cost: Very cheap
- Preparation time: 15 Minutes
- Portions: 12 cookies
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian Regional
- Seasonality: All seasons
- Energy 109.02 (Kcal)
- Carbohydrates 15.98 (g) of which sugars 5.90 (g)
- Proteins 1.59 (g)
- Fat 4.29 (g) of which saturated 0.57 (g)of which unsaturated 3.48 (g)
- Fibers 0.34 (g)
- Sodium 68.37 (mg)
Indicative values for a portion of 1 g processed in an automated way starting from the nutritional information available on the CREA* and FoodData Central** databases. It is not food and / or nutritional advice.
* CREATES Food and Nutrition Research Center: https://www.crea.gov.it/alimenti-e-nutrizione https://www.alimentinutrizione.it ** U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central, 2019. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov
Ingredients for 12 red wine cookies
To prepare gluten-free red wine cookies I replaced the 170 g of all-purpose flour with 120 g rice flour + 50 g of corn flour, both very fine. If you are celiac, remember that the following ingredients must have the “gluten-free” label: rice flour, corn flour, baking ammonia.
- 1 3/8 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/3 cup red wine
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1/3 cup sugar (+ 1 tablespoon to cover the cookies)
- 1 tsp baking ammonia
- 1/2 tsp anise seeds
- 1 pinch salt
Tools
- 1 Bowl
- 1 Small Bowl
- 1 Wooden Spoon
- 1 Baking Sheet
- Parchment Paper
Traditional and Gluten-Free Red Wine Cookies Recipe
For the English version of this recipe click here!
To prepare red wine cookies, start by placing all the dry ingredients in a bowl: flour (or the corn and rice flours), baking ammonia, sugar, a pinch of salt, and the anise seeds (1).
Briefly mix with a wooden spoon and make a well in the center; then pour in the red wine first (2) and then the oil (3).
Keep mixing with the wooden spoon until you form a dough workable by hand. At this point, turn it onto the work surface (4) and knead it briefly, forming a smooth dough (5). If it is too soft, you can add a little more flour.
The dough for red wine cookies does not need to rest, so you can proceed immediately to shape your cookies. Divide the dough into 12 roughly equal-sized balls (6).
Take the first ball and roll it into a thick log (7), then close it (8), forming a ring of 1.5-1.75 inches in diameter. Continue this way until the dough is used up.
Place one or two tablespoons of sugar in a small bowl and dip one side of the cookies in it (9), so the sugar sticks well.
Arrange the red wine cookies slightly apart on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper (10).
Bake them in a preheated oven at 350°F (static) for about twenty minutes, until they are nicely colored on the surface (11). Remove from the oven and let them cool completely.
Serve the red wine cookies at the end of a meal, with a glass of red wine, or with sweet or fortified wine.
How to store red wine cookies
Red wine cookies, thanks also to the presence of baking ammonia, keep well for a long time: store them in a tin box for up to two or three weeks.
Tips and variations
With the same recipe you can make white wine cookies or use a sweet aromatic wine like sour cherry wine.
To obtain crispier and more golden cookies, after placing them on the baking sheet, sprinkle them with more sugar.
