You know that moment when life hits hard and you have this urgency to get instantly teleported to your childhood?
For me the smell of these Grandma’s Ricotta Cookies (“lor kurabiyesi” in my native Turkish) is the next best thing to a time machine when such an emergency strikes.
So instead of tasking myself with a 30+ min baking project and ending up filling my kitchen with 20+ cookies that will most likely end up in my belly and taking my pancreas by a storm, I created this mini-batch recipe.
With the help of my lovely patient mother of course, who somehow manages to muster the energy to indulge my obsessive baking and recipe creating by measuring her ingredients by grams and writing it down.
All I had to do was remove the egg and do some basic division and voila, the emergency grandma cookie recipe has been born. You need 3 cookies in under 20 min, you got 3 cookies in under 20 mins!
Your kitchen will still smell the same and your therapy will be achieved. Sans damage to metabolism.
And if you don’t trust me in how amazing and epic these cookies are, you can start with this little batch to test it for your own. I’m afraid you will be baking the OG full batch recipe for your next holiday extravaganza.
Hope you give the recipe a try and let me know what you think!
Mini-batch Ricotta Cookies
Equipment
- Cookie sheet
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp (plant) butter softened (14 g)
- 2 tbsp sugar (24 g) sub granulated sweetener
- 2 tbsp ricotta or full-fat cottage cheese, drained (30 g) dairy-free if desired, Kite Hill Foods makes a great df ricotta alternative, also see recipe notes for how to make it at home
- 1 tsp (optional) lemon juice add optional lemon zest if desired
- pinch of salt
- drop of vanilla
- 1/3 cup flour (40 g) gf all purpose if desired
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
Coating
- 1 tbsp turbinado or regular sugar (12 g)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F and line a cookie sheet with parchment.
- In a small bowl and a fork/whisk cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy (took me a few min).
- Add cheese, vanilla, (optional) lemon and lemon zest.
- In a mug/other bowl mix flour, baking powder, pinch of salt.
- Gradually add dry to wet, stopping as soon as you get a nice soft cookie dough.
- If the dough gets too crumbly add a drop of water, if it's too sticky add a pinch more flour.
- Roll cookie dough between your palms, roll them in sugar (turbinado sugar works best) and place on the parchment.
- Bake 18-20 minutes until edges are brown, cool for 5 and enjoy!
Notes
- If you don’t have a food scale, and you don’t feel comfortable adjusting the amounts, remember to use the spoon & level method in measuring flour to avoid over-measuring, which will lead to dry cookies.
- Here’s a dairy-free ricotta alternative I have tested these cookies with.
- You can use cashews instead of the dairy-free cheese in this recipe. Soak 1 cup raw cashews (120 g) in hot water at least 1 hour, ideally overnight, drain and blend with 1/4 cup or so nut milk (or soaking water) and a pinch of salt until smooth. This will make about 1 cup dairy-free cheese substitute. You can freeze whatever you don’t use for later.
Fluffy, light, and moreish! Made these with coconut sugar (all I had) and they tasted just like a cheesecakey graham cracker crust!
Yay Jemima! thank you so much for letting me know, that sounds so good! Keep me posted <3