Having a blog — what does it mean? It means having the chance to meet special people and spend a wonderful day together, feeling like teenagers on a school trip. We were three, like the Three Musketeers or the Three Graces… or, given how much we ate, bought and planned, perhaps more like the three little pigs!
After a day with Caro of Semplicemente Pepe Rosa, the technicolor girl, and Fra, a foodblogger-to-be who will open her blog sooner or later, I returned home with a bundle of precious ingredients: long pepper — long talked about but smelled for the first time — true fragrant vanilla essence, tragacanth gum and candied fruit.
With those ingredients in hand — and faced with a sudden lack of butter at the moment I decided to bake cookies for a friend — I tried my first olive oil pastry. It was love at first sight. It’s commonly said that butter can be replaced with two-thirds of its weight in extra virgin olive oil. That may be an oversimplification, but for these cookies the ratio worked beautifully.
I’m usually a staunch supporter of butter in desserts, but these cookies exceeded expectations. They turned out quite different from classic shortbread, with a distinct, very unusual character. I also added candied fruit and a hint of grated long pepper.
The only precaution is to use a suitable extra virgin olive oil: a light, fruity oil is best. Prefer lighter regional oils — for example Ligurian or Lombard styles — or any oil where bitter or peppery notes aren’t dominant. In my case I used a DOP Laghi Lombardi extra virgin olive oil.
Ingredients:
- 00 flour (organic), 350 g
- caster sugar, 150 g
- 1 egg
- light, fruity extra virgin olive oil, 100 g
- pinch of salt
- baking powder, 1 tablespoon
- candied red fruits (mainly strawberries, then cranberries and cherries), about 150 g
- vanilla essence, 1 tablespoon
- grated long pepper, half berry
Preheat the oven to 180°C (static). Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl. Add the sugar, a pinch of salt, the candied red fruits, the vanilla essence and the grated long pepper. Beat the egg, pour it in, add the olive oil and mix with a spoon until the mixture begins to come together; then work briefly by hand and shape the dough into a cylinder. The dough will be crumbly and soft. At this stage the olive oil is quite noticeable, but after baking it becomes much subtler.
Generously flour a large work surface and roll the dough with a rolling pin to a thickness of about 5 mm (not thinner). Cut shapes with your preferred cookie cutters and transfer them with a spatula to a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Bake in the preheated oven for about 15 minutes, until the edges are lightly golden. Remove from the oven and let the cookies cool on a wire rack.
I used large butterfly cutters for quick snacks and small, delicate cutters (bunnies, kittens and turtles) for afternoon tea. From the leftover scraps I made irregular lozenges — I had no desire to re-roll the dough — and those shapes actually suited these olive oil cookies well, highlighting their simple, refined flavor.
Tasting moment. I can honestly say these are the best cookies I’ve made: I loved them. They are crisp and light, with the resinous aroma of long pepper that harmonizes wonderfully with the sweetness of red fruits and vanilla. They keep well in an airtight container for several days — if you can resist eating them all at once.