Italian Anise Cookies

Name: Italian Anise Cookies
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 12 min
Total time: 32 min
Yield: 26 cookies
Ingredients: 1/2 cup unsalted butter, (softened); 1/2 cup granulated sugar; 3 eggs; 1/4 cup milk ((I used 2%, use your preferred)); 2 tsp anise extract; 1/2 tsp vanilla extract; 3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, (start at 3 [see instructions]); 1 tbsp baking powder; 2 cups confectioners' sugar; 3 tbsp water; 1/4 tsp anise extract; Nonpareils (for decoration)

November 17, 2017 By Alyssa 43 Comments

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These classic Italian anise cookies are tender, easy, and covered in a glaze with sprinkles. Enjoy these cookies as part of a holiday cookie tray or year-round!

So much of what I love about the holiday season is tied to food (because, obviously), and family favorite recipes dominate my holiday menu each year. Can you relate to that? I try out a few new cookies or side dishes or whatnot each year, but by and large it wouldn’t be Christmas, let’s say, without baked clam dip and struffoli and Panettone french toast.

I already have my clams, honey, and Panettone ready to go. 🙂

Besides struffoli, one of the Italian recipes my mom has made every year since before I can even remember are Italian anise cookies. These tender, licorice-flavored cookies are topped with glaze and festive sprinkles to add a special touch to any holiday cookie tray. I know the licorice flavor can be polarizing like cilantro, but for those who don’t mind or like it – these Italian anise cookies will be just your speed.

In our family recipe we always use anise, though I know others use vanilla, almond, or citrus extracts in place of it. The quantities of anise extract as written in the recipe card below (in my opinion) are just enough – you can certainly taste it, but it’s not in-your-face and overpowering.

When it comes to the flour, you’ll notice I mention to start with three cups. Once all of the cookie ingredients are mixed together, poke the dough and see how it is. Likely it’ll be pretty sticky, so work in additional flour one tablespoon at a time until the stickiness has reduced. You’ll want the dough to be able to roll between your hands with very minimal sticking. I added an extra 1/4-cup during this process, but you may need more or less depending on how your dough is behaving.

Oh! And something else about the flour. My procedure for measuring flour is to first stir/whisk the flour in its canister to fluff it up. Then I spoon it into my measuring cup, taking care not to pack it down. Once the measuring cup is overflowing, I use the straight edge of my spoon to level off the measuring cup. I’ll do that step over top of the flour canister so the excess goes right back in. This way of measuring prevents extra flour from being added to the recipe, which can cause baked goods to be dry. It’s the way I measure flour for all my recipes.

MAKE-AHEAD TIP: These Italian anise cookies can be made several days ahead of time. If doing so, I suggest baking the cookies and then NOT glazing them until the day you would like to serve them. Reason being is that the next day and the days beyond, the colors of the rainbow nonpareils bleed onto the white glaze and don’t look quite as picture perfect as they day they were glazed and decorated. Of course if you don’t really care about that feel free to glaze ’em up right away, or you can omit the sprinkles or use white nonpareils instead.

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5 from 13 votes