Crumiri (Italian Polenta Cookies)

There’s a few food websites I check regularly, one of which is Chocolate & Zucchini. I like it for Clotilde’s writing style and the recipes I don’t really see anywhere else. I haven’t made anything from this site until recently.

Crumiri are Italian cookies, and they’re made with cornmeal according the recipe, which I assume it Polenta. I hope I’m correct! Well, they worked with polenta anyway! They’re very easy to bring together and take a short time in the oven and produce gorgeous tasty corn type shortbread. Well worth the effort, thanks Clotide.

180 g unsalted butter, at room temperature
140 g sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 tsp pure vanilla extract, or 1/8 teaspoon seeds scraped from a real vanilla bean
240 g all-purpose flour
½ tsp salt
110 g polenta

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F) and line a baking sheet with baking paper.

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well between each addition. Add the vanilla and mix again.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine the flour, salt, and polenta. Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and mix until just combined. The dough will be thick.

Transfer the dough to a piping bag fitted with a 2-cm (3/4-inch) star-shaped nozzle, and pipe onto the prepared baking sheet to create the shape of your choice (such as a horseshoe, a stick, or a small "V", "S", or "O"). Make sure you keep the cookies small and give them a little room to expand.

If you don't own a piping bag or worse, if you own a shoddy one, plop rounded teaspoons of the dough onto the baking sheet.

Slip into the oven and bake for 12 to 16 minutes (depending on the size and shape of the cookies), until pale golden around the edges. Let stand on the baking sheet for 2 minutes then transfer to a rack to cool completely. The cookies will keep for about a week in an airtight container.

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