Ricciarelli: Chewy Italian Almond Cookies
Ricciarelli are dense, chewy Italian almond cookies originating in Siena. They are a distant, and much less fussy, Italian cousin to the French macaron — perfect with tea or coffee!
It’s about time I shared a recipe with you that was inspired from our trip to Italy last fall!
We had so much good food while we were there that I wish I could relive or recreate: Bistecca alla Fiorentina, or Florentine steak. Tiramisu. Homemade cavatelli pasta with arrabiata sauce from our cooking class in Rome. Allllllll those interesting flavors of gelato. Of course, pizza. More than anything, I wish I could import the amazing cured meats we had or have just one more sandwich from Lo SchiacciaVino.
While we were in Florence, we had the rare treat of meeting up with my European blogger friend Emily of Inside the Rustic Kitchen (an amazing go-to recipe blog for all things Italian!).
We both happened to bring each other identical gifts – cookies local to the cities we lived in. I brought her benne wafers (small, crunchy sesame cookies) from Charleston, and she brought me a box of ricciarelli – chewy almond cookies native to Siena, Italy.
I had never had them before but my husband and I were in love with them from the first bite! It was really difficult trying to save any of the cookies for more than a couple days!
What are ricciarelli?
Ricciarelli are cookies from Siena, Italy, that have a kick-you-in-the-face almond flavor, a lovely dense chewiness, and a beautiful cracked surface. One of these cookies is just perfect alongside a hot cup of Earl Grey or, if you want to live in true Italian style, a cappuccino.
Think of ricciarelli cookies as a cousin to macarons. Technically, I believe, it is actually a type of macaroon – with two o’s – but they made me think of macarons – with one o – as I was making them.
The recipes and techniques of ricciarelli and macarons are actually very similar: In both types of cookie, you fold almond flour and sugar into whipped egg whites, and you leave the shaped cookies on the baking sheet for a while to dry out before baking in order to form a little crust on the outside.
But — and this is good news — ricciarelli dough is much less fussy to make than macaron batter.
In ricciarelli, the ratio of almond flour to egg whites is much higher than in macarons, so you get a dense, chewy almond cookie rather than a light, airy one. Because there’s so much almond flour to fold in, it’s impossible to keep much of that fluffy meringue texture. Instead of lava-like macaron batter, you end up with a sticky dough you can roll into balls with your hands.
However, that hint of a crispy meringue-like exterior is still there before you hit the chewy inside. Letting the cookies rest long enough on the counter before baking is key to getting this texture!
Getting perfectly crackled ricciarelli cookies
That dried-out shell on the cookie dough is also vital to getting the beautifully craggy, crackled effect on the outside as well. With ricciarelli, you roll each ball of dough in powdered sugar before baking. When it cooks, the dough on the inside expands and breaks through the dried exterior, allowing golden cracks to show through the white outside.
However, sometimes the cookies need a little help in getting the crackled effect. The first time I made these, the dough was practically drying out by the time I got them on the cookie sheet and cracked very easily on their own. The second time I made them, even though I left them on the counter for two hours instead of one, the cookies needed some assistance to get the cracked texture.
You can see the difference here – the cookies on the right didn’t have any help, while the ones on the left were pre-cracked before baking.
I lightly squeezed each cookie from opposite corners until I was satisfied with the cracks I could see forming in the tops of the unbaked cookies. Then, instead of relying on the expanding dough to create the cracks, they just have to enhance the ones you already made.
I’ve demonstrated below on the baked cookies how I squeezed the unbaked dough balls to crackle the shells. Feel free to lightly press down on the tops or whatever you need to do to get those cracks started!
It’s basically like when you slice the top of your bread dough before baking. If you don’t, the dough will still expand and crack, but it might not be where you want it to. (In the case of the cookies, I found without pre-cracking the dough, it will mostly crack on the bottoms of the cookies rather than the tops, which isn’t nearly as pretty)
Getting the ideal flavor and texture
I did several rounds of recipe testing to get these just right for you! The first batch was delicious but tasted too much of orange and was too sweet. (The orangey flavor was lovely, just not as close to the original super-almondy ones we had.)
The second batch was much closer to the original cookies we had, but lost that hint of a meringue-like shell. Granted, I don’t remember that being present in the original cookies we had in Italy, but was a really nice attribute of the first batch of cookies I made!
I wasn’t sure why less sugar and orange zest would affect the texture, but I theorized that it was related to the humidity on the day I made the second batch.
What else could I do but test the same recipe with a third batch? This time I had our new dehumidifier on. Voila! Nice slightly crispy thin meringue-like shell, with the dense, moist, chewy interior. Perfecto!
Granted, they were still AMAZING in the second batch – just know that the humidity of your climate may affect the exact texture of your cookies. You can always leave them out longer before baking to help them out if you are in an especially humid environment!
Anyway, the best thing you can do to make sure these cookies come out well is to TRY THEM. They’re very easy to make — and even with subtle variations on exactly how the surface or flavor of each batch turned out, the consensus for each and every cookie was that they were awesome.
Hands down: holy amazingness. These have become one of my favorite cookies now!
Ricciarelli: Chewy Italian Almond Cookies
Ingredients
- 2 1/4 cups almond flour
- 1 3/4 cups powdered sugar plus ½ cup for coating cookies
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- 2 egg whites
- 1 tablespoon almond extract (this is not a typo)
- 1 teaspoon orange zest about half a large orange
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon lemon juice
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, combine almond flour, powdered sugar, salt, and baking powder.
- Add egg whites and lemon juice to the bowl of a stand mixer. Beat at medium low speed until frothy (about a minute), then at medium high until stiff peaks form. Add almond extract, vanilla extract, and orange zest, and fold in until well combined.
- Using a fine mesh sieve, sift almond flour mixture into the beaten egg white mixture. Add it in in about 2-3 batches, folding in each batch. Try to keep some air in the egg whites, but at this point it will form a pretty sticky dough rather than a fluffy meringue (see step by step photos in blog post or how-to video for texture)
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Using clean hands, roll dough into balls about 1" to 1.5" in diameter (or 23-25g each), then roll in powdered sugar until well coated. Shape into an oval, then arrange on baking sheet with some space between them for spreading.
- Leave at room temperature for about half an hour to an hour, or until the tops have dried to the touch and formed almost a little shell. (This may take longer in humid areas.) Flatten the cookies slightly and lightly squeeze or stretch opposite corners, trying to form little cracks in the top of the dried shell to pre-crack it before baking. (Not doing this won't affect the taste, but pre-cracking them makes them much prettier if you want that beautiful white-gold contrast!)
- While cookies are drying, preheat oven to 300℉ (150℃). When the cookies are ready, bake for about 20 minutes. Cool and store in an airtight container. These are even better the next day and are great with coffee or tea!
I made these cookies for Christmas twice, because we ate them all the first time lol. I’m on keto and instead of regular icing sugar I used swerve this time, but I need to know the nutritional value of them in order to plot them into my carb counter. Do you know their nutritional info? Thanks.
I’m sorry, I don’t know the nutritional value of these using a sugar substitute! You can input the ingredients into a tool like myfitnesspal to give you an estimate.
Ricciarelli (and amaretti morbidi) are my favorite, and I was excited to try making them myself! I’m not a proficient baker, but your recipe yielded the most PERFECT and authentic cookies. The meringue shell, perfectly cracked, is to die for, and the chewy marzipan-like center is sure to send you straight to heaven – I will be making them weekly (following your recipe) for the rest of my life!!!
Your comment was the nicest thing I’ve read in a long time, Victoria! Thank you so much for brightening my week, and I’m so glad you love these cookies!
Amazingly delicious and easy. Made them to start the New Year and my family loved them.
So delicious! I love the strong almond flavor and the macaron-like chewiness. And I also love that your recipe for these is gluten free. Great for my New year’s Eve.
I’m so glad you like these! It’s definitely nice to have a good gluten free cookie recipe on hand when you need one too!
We adore these cookies!
My husband is a diabetic and I love Italian almond cookies so working with almond flour needed to happen. BOOM!
Making some to share with MIL who is also diabetic for Christmas.
Thanks for this brilliant recipe!
Haha, BOOM! So glad these worked out for you and your family!
Did you alter the sugars?
Made these last night and they’re delicious. I doubled the batch without any problems that I could tell. The dough was a medium tan color. The almond meal was Bob’s Red Mill and the packet specifies that the almonds are ground with skin on. I might try blanched almond meal next time, out of curiosity, though the cookies are fine. As I dribbled the vanilla extract into the dough it occurred to me that white vanilla crystals might be worth trying (though white vanilla doesn’t taste quite as nice).
If I had spaced the cookies a little tighter, I could have gotten the double recipe onto one large sheet. Rain was on the way, so I warmed the oven while shaping the cookies and put the sheets in the turned-off oven to dry out. Some time later, I pinched a cookie and felt a pop, so I pulled them all out and cracked them. They didn’t fully shatter, just got a few cracks, so next time I will be more observant how the test cookie cracks.
I took out a handful to save for a gluten-free friend and expect my siblings etc. to love the rest of the batch on Christmas. Thank you for the easy, low-fat, DELICIOUS recipe, Caroline!
Thanks so much for your detailed review! I’m so glad you enjoyed them!
Outrageously delicious!! Not sure what a dash of lemon juice was, but found a “dash” measuring spoon amongst my baking utensils and used two dashes because one seemed too little. The drying processed worked pretty good, only had to help a few to show the cracks (guess NJ in winter doesn’t emit too much humidity). The orange zest added a distinct flavor, which separates the taste from Pignoli cookies. Everyone loved them so much they will now be a staple when I bake Italian cookies for holidays and special events. Thank you for such a delicious recipe.
Thanks so much for sharing! I’m so glad you loved these cookies!
Just made these and they are amazing! I ground whole almonds as fine as I could but even with the slightly coarser texture they are wonderful. Thank you!
Almond flour is just finely ground almonds, so you did well grinding whole almonds! Glad you liked these!
These are divine! I was looking for an almond cookie to celebrate the feast of St. Francis when I stumbled on this recipe. I used aquafaba in place of the egg whites and they turned out so pretty, elegant and delicious, even with 3 little helpers! Because they are Siennese, I will have to make them for the feast of St. Catherine of Sienna. Thank for sharing this well written, easy to follow recipe!
Good to know these worked with aquafaba too! Making them for St. Catherine’s feast day is a great idea!
How much aquafaba did you use? I absolutely love these cookies but unfortunately have to avoid eggs now. I made a different recipe with aquafaba but I miss these. Would love to know how you did it. Thanks.
I won a cookie bakeoff this past weekend with this recipe (14 other contenders!)! I think the really potent almond flavor helped me stand out against the typical holiday shortbread, sugar, ginger and chocolate flavors. They came out exactly as pictured and were quite easy. A few notes– I couldnt’ get any of the almond flour to sift through my sieve, so I gave up on that; no issues with results. Also It was really hard to tell when they were done, since they don’t brown or even puff up much. My only clue was to periodically pick a random one and look at its bottom, until they got to be a bit golden. Even then I thought they might be a little underdone, but by cooling, they firmed up a little and were really a perfect consistency. Grazie mille!
Most cookies will look too soft or a little underdone right when they come out of the oven, but will be perfect when they cool – if they look completely done when you take them out of the oven they will probably end up too dry! If you had to cook them much longer than the 20 minutes for them to finish cooking you might consider investing in an oven thermometer to double check your oven temp! I only use mine since my oven takes way longer to preheat than it thinks and is consistently 25 degrees cooler than the setting. They’re only about $6 so totally worth the investment! (affiliate link) https://amzn.to/35HnUa4 Congrats on winning the cookie bakeoff!!
Hi Caroline, Thanks for the lovely recipe. You explain things well imho. Please don’t be horrified, but I’ve just made your ricciarelli without sugar, using sifted stevia….and they’ve worked! No doubt you would find the taste a bit wrong, but the trade-off is worth it in our case. We lived in Florence for two years some forty years ago, and the shops were not above offering imports from neighboring Siena. We didn’t have many ricciarelli, and the memory of what we did have has long faded, but the other day when I saw a beautiful package of ricciarelli in Carluccio’s shop, I remembered–ahah! — and was inspired…. Looking at the ingredients on the package, I wondered if they might not be home-make-able… Your recipe won the lottery, thank goodness. (It was actually your writing.) The ricciarelli have cracked on top, as you said they would. . And I have just eaten one….. oh, yes! They are al dente on the outside and chewy inside. Flavor is great. Dreamy! You’ve made a huge difference in tonight’s supper, in the holiday season and in life I expect! Wow! Thank you again, Caroline. With every best wish from one effusive Ruth Whetsel
Ruth, your comment gave me teary eyes! It absolutely made my week. Thank you so much for taking the time for coming back and leaving such a lovely comment on the post. It really motivates me to create more recipes like this that bring back wonderful memories for you and others!
I just want to thank you so much for sharing this recipe! When I got married in 2017, a group of my friends bought a bunch of cookies from New England bakeries for a cookie table, and this cookie was easily the best. It took me this long to figure out what the cookie was and find a recipe! I just made them for my work’s cookie exchange, and they were a huge hit!
Yayy!! I’m so happy to hear that! Thanks for sharing!
Delicious and approved by my Italian partner! Thank you for sharing!
Awesome! I’m glad y’all both enjoyed them!
I am so excited I found this recipe. I remember my Sicilian grandmother making these at Christmas but she didn’t use citrus. Hers were a bit darker brown and had a spice note. Do you have any suggestions for what she may have included….cinnamon?, brown sugar. I really want to use your base to replicate her flavor. All suggestions most appreciated! Merry Christmas.
Wow, that sounds delicious! Unfortunately I have only had the ones from Siena so I’m not sure what the Sicilian variation might be. I asked my coworker who has Sicilian heritage and she suggested it might have been cinnamon, nutmeg, or anise, which all make regular appearances in Sicilian cookies. Hope this helps!
Thanks for the suggestions, Caroline. I can’t wait to experiment over the holidays.
Hi,
Update since I first made these – I’ve now made them three times and they are such a hit! My coworkers love them, my family loves them, and everyone wants the recipe! I agree with Doris above, best almond cookie and for me it’s my new favorite cookie overall!
Question, I wanted to make these for Christmas for a friend that has Celiac, it seems like these would be Gluten Free? Since there isn’t any flour in them?
Thanks!
Tricia
I have had people say they’ve made them for their gluten-free friends and family but I’d check your other ingredients like powdered sugar to make sure there isn’t some gluten hiding somewhere else! Maybe send her an ingredient list and see if there are any ingredients to watch out for – some ingredients have hidden gluten depending on the brand like chicken broth or I think white vinegar but she would know better than I would if there are any to look out for!
best almond cookies i have ever had and have been baking for 40 years and have tried most of them. Costco has almond flour in a 1.36kg bad and is great for this recipe . thanks again my family loves them
These are amazing! Thanks so much for sharing your recipe. It brings back memories of Siena!
Yay, I’m so glad you liked these!
I made these today and they were so easy and so delicious!! Thank you!! Completely 5 stars!
Thanks so much for sharing!
Thank you so much for posting this recipe! I did study abroad for a semester and lived in Siena, and I was disappointed that I couldn’t find these cookies anywhere to buy after coming back to the US. Then I found your recipe, and I am delighted that I can replicate these little gems that are even better than those from Nannini in Siena. They are the perfect cookie, and I made them for a work event too and they were a huge hit! One question though, what type of sieve/sifter did you actually use? I didn’t have one so I had to buy one, and I couldn’t really get the almond flour to pass through it very well so I gave up and just added it into the mixture without it. Thanks!
Tricia
I’m so glad you liked these cookies! The sieve I used is something along these lines (affiliate link) https://amzn.to/2qZ1ly9 but I think I just got mine at the Dollar Tree. I would probably say sifting the almond flour isn’t quite as important for these cookies as it is for, say, macarons, but I’d still give it your best shot.
Thank you! I now found a sieve that works now!
Hi, could you please tell me what kind of almond flour do you use? At the grocery they have fine, extra fine, coarse, bleached, unbleached…I don’t want to make any mistake! Thanks
Hi Silvia! Your grocery seems to have a lot more options than mine for almond flour, but given those choices I’d probably go with either fine or extra fine, unbleached. Since we do sift the almond flour you wouldn’t want course, and the unbleached will probably help give it that nice golden color when you bake it!
best cookies i have ever made and i have tried them all . I have made 3 batches so far and my family loved them . over a 30 year span of trying to make almond cookies just like home these have exceeded my expectations bravo girl and keep those recipes coming 10+
Thank you so much, Doris!! Your comment made my whole day!
I made these twice this week because they were just that good! This my new favorite cookie recipe!
Thanks so much, Rene! It’s one of my favorite cookie recipes too!
Well, mine aren’t nearly as pretty as pictured (sadly, the dough was quite sticky to roll into balls. I probably used too little almond flour). They taste amazing though! So I’ll just count that as a success 😉
The dough will be pretty sticky but if you feel it needs a little additional almond flour feel free to add it until it’s a bit more workable! Should still come out fine. If it is super sticky, you may need to let the dough rest for a little extra time in order to form that dry surface that allows it to crack. Glad you enjoyed these! They’re some of my favorites!