neopolitan sugar cookies

neopolitan sugar cookies

• 31 Jan 2021

I had lots of spare time during the Christmas break and searched high and low for new recipes to share with you over the coming year. These Neopolitan cookies caught my eye and I decided to make a batch for my empty biscuit tin.

I decided to track down Matthew Rice's original recipe and adapted it. I already had some freeze dried strawberries left over from making the Woodland meringues, so I had all the ingredients in the house. The cookies were very easy to make. I used my food processor to whiz the dough together and sightly adapted the original recipe.

Here's the recipe for you which makes 12 cookies. I only made a half batch, so double the recipe if you'd like to make more. For all my recipes I use a 250 ml cup, a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60 g eggs. My oven is a conventional oven so if you have a fan-forced oven you may need to reduce the temperature by 20ºC.

Neapolitan Sugar Cookies by Matthew Rice - makes 12

Ingredients

1⅓ cups plain flour

½ tsp bicarb soda

pinch salt

110 g unsalted butter room temperature

⅔ cup caster sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste

1 egg

4g ground freeze dried strawberries

1-2 drops red food coloring

3 tsp cocoa sifted with ½ tsp espresso powder

1-2 tbs sugar 

 

Method

Sift the flour, baking soda, and salt into a small bowl and set to one side. 

 

Combine the butter, sugar and vanilla in the bowl of a stand mixer and mix until pale and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Mix in the egg and then slowly add the flour to the creamed mixture. Mix on low speed only until the flour disappears. 

 

Turn the dough out and divide it into three pieces. Set aside one portion - this is the vanilla portion of the cookie. Place the second portion back into the mixer bowl. Add the freeze dried berries and sufficient food coloring to colour the dough pink. Remove the dough from the mixer. Add the last portion of dough to the mixer, and mix in the cocoa powder and the espresso powder.

 

Divide the vanilla dough into 12 equal portions and roll into balls. Repeat with the other flavours then place each flavour into separate containers and refrigerate for at least an hour, but preferably overnight. 

 

Preheat oven to 190°C, conventional. Line 2 baking trays with baking paper. Roll each ball in sugar, and then take a portion of each colour and compress together to form a ball. Compress a little so that each cookie looks a bit like a hockey puck. 

 

Place 6 cookies on the baking tray, allowing plenty of room for the cookies to spread. Bake one tray at a time for about 15 minutes or until the cookies spread nicely, and the vanilla parts are golden around the edges.

Cool on the tray for 10 minutes before placing on a cooling rack. When completely cold, store in an airtight tin. 

 

These are nice and simple cookies, perfect with a glass of milk or a cup of tea. The chocolate portion, my favorite, tastes of chocolate and the strawberry portion tastes like strawberries. I shared these with my next door neighbour's children and they were a hit.

 

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

 

Bye for now,

 

Jillian