Happy Monday: Macine, a well know store-bought cookie in Italy

Here is another DIY recipe. The Macine are a very famous store-bought cookie in Italy, produced by Mulino Bianco. I LOVE these cookies. They are very simple, yet with a  very distinguished flavor. They are crunchy yet they become very soft and creamy when soaked into warm milk. Warm milk and Macine are my favourite breakfast of all times when I’m home.

As of today, I'm leaving for Italy in 3 days but I'm already dreaming of my first breakfast with these cookies. However, I really miss them here in the US so I thought I would try to recreate them. The only twist I gave them is to make them without the central hole and instead to fill them with jam.

Honestly, I made these changes because I was very skeptical about being able to reproduce them, so I thought the jam taste would compensate for the lack of grandeur of my homemade version. As I said, their taste is quite unique; their distinguished character comes mainly from the presence of cream but Italian cooking cream is very different from both sour cream as well as whipping cream so I didn’t think I could get too close to the original taste. Well, it turned out I was wrong. Now I know that when I have nostalgia I can temporary remedy to it with these home-made Macine.

Macine

Ingredients


500 gr all purpose flour
50 gr cornstarch
150 gr confectioner's sugar

200 gr unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 egg
5-6 tbsp cream
1 tbsp baking powder
pinch of salt

jam, marmalade, nutella for the filling, as desired

Preheat the oven to 350F (180C).

The process is very easy: simply put all the ingredients together in a big bowl or on a lightly floured surface. Mix well and roll out the dough and with a rolling pin make the dough about 7 mm thick. 

Use a cookie cutter to obtain many round cookies (and a smaller cookie cutter to make the whole in the center if you want to make the original Macine). Place the cookies onto a cookie pan covered with parchment paper. 

Put a spoon of your chosen filling in half of the rounds obtained and cover them with the other half. 

To make sure you close the cookies well, push with the thumb all around the cookies.

Bake for 20 minutes or until the borders of the cookies start to get brown. Let cool completely on a cooling rack and then sprinkle with confectioner's sugar just before serving.

Enjoy!