These Italian lemon ricotta cookies with lemon glaze on top are classic Italian cookies with a light and chewy texture that are so delicious and easy to make. These ricotta and lemon cookies make a great addition to a cup of espresso or coffee and are perfect for any time of year. If you love lemon and ricotta, you are going to love these cookies.
These Italian lemon ricotta cookies have a soft almost cake-like texture and are very light. You can definitely eat a bunch without even noticing 🙂
I did not grow up making these cookies in my Italian family but I did grow up eating them at my local Italian bakery. I got into making these recently because of how much I love them and let me tell you, they are so simple to make. I really love them with espresso 🙂
This recipe is my favorite version after much trial and error and tastes like what I grew up eating.
For the lemon in these Italian lemon cookies, I like to add the lemon flavor only in the glaze that tops the cookies. You can add the lemon flavor to the cookies if you prefer to skip making the glaze portion of this recipe but I like to add the lemon on top.
Ingredients you will need
Cookies:
- Unsalted butter.
- Whole Milk Ricotta Cheese. You want to make sure you are using full-fat ricotta for this recipe.
- Eggs. Large eggs are what I use.
- All-purpose flour.
- Vanilla: I prefer using vanilla extract for this recipe but you can use vanilla bean pasta if you prefer.
- Baking soda.
- Baking powder.
- Kosher salt.
- Nutmeg: This may seem surprising but it is just a little bit and I find it really helps bring out the ricotta flavor in the cookies.
For the lemon glaze:
- Powdered sugar
- Water
- Lemon rind and juice.
Optional: For a more festive and traditional look, add some nonpareil sprinkles on top of the lemon glaze before it dries.
Ingredient Notes
If you prefer a stronger lemon flavor, use only the juice of the lemon in place of the water in the icing portion of the recipe. These cookies use only lemon zest in the icing which gives the cookies a light lemon flavor.
Make this the way you like it!
All of the ingredients are fairly standard baking ingredients because this recipe is very uncomplicated. You will probably already have most of the ingredients already in your pantry.
How To Make Italian Lemon Ricotta Cookies
- Cream butter and sugar: This is just mixing the butter and sugar together until it reaches a nice creamy consistency. You can do this by hand or with a hand mixer. Using a hand mixer is much easier!
- Add ricotta and eggs: Now add ricotta and eggs then mix until smooth.
- Mix dry ingredients: Combine dry ingredients which are flour, nutmeg, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.
- Combine: Now mix the flour mixture with wet ingredients.
- Scoop: Scoop out cookies with a small cookie or ice cream scoop onto a sheet pan. I like to line the sheet pan with some parchment paper for easy cleanup.
- Bake: Bake the cookies in a preheated 350-degree oven. Make sure to preheat the oven for 10 minutes to ensure it is properly preheated.
- Cool: Let cool completely. You want those cookies to be completely cool before they get that delicious Italian lemon glaze!
- Make the lemon glaze: In a small bowl, add the powdered sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest, and water and mix until it has a thick but pourable consistency.
- Add the glaze to the cookies: Add lemon glaze and allow to dry completely. I find the best way to do this is by adding the glaze to the cookies with a large tablespoon while the cookies are on the cooling rack so the excess glaze can fall through those cracks.
Top Tips For These Italian Cookies
- When making these lemon and ricotta cookies, they do not spread much at all in the oven. Because of this, I prefer to use a small cookie scoop to scoop out the ricotta dough and then gently smooth off the top of the cookie.
- Making the glaze portion of this recipe is really easy but maybe you'd prefer to skip this part you can. The cookies will not have that lemon flavor though.
- Make sure you are using full-fat ricotta when making these cookies. When baking with ricotta whether it is cookies or a whole ricotta pie, you want to make sure you are not going low fat because it will affect the flavor and texture if you do.
- Add more lemon flavor if you like that. You can use lemon juice in place of the water to add more lemony goodness.
Storing
These chewy cookies store well for up to one week in an air-tight container on the counter. If you don't think you will eat all of them by this time, you can freeze half of the cookie dough and bake up half of the recipe.
To freeze the cookie dough, scoop the dough onto a cookie sheet placing each scoop side by side. Place in the freezer overnight. When the dough is frozen, remove it and place it in a freezer-proof container (I like to use a Ziploc freezer bag for this step. To thaw the cookie dough, place it in the fridge overnight to gently thaw then bake it up according to the recipe.
More Ricotta Recipes
If you love these Italian lemon ricotta cookies, you may also like these:
More Italian Sweets You May Like:
- Italian Cornmeal Cookies
- Buttermilk Panna Cotta
- Italian Rice Pudding
- Torta Tenerina Italian Chocolate Brownie Cake
- Italian Hot Chocolate
- Ciambella Cake
- Olive Oil Cookies
- Italian Shortbread Cookies
Italian Lemon Ricotta Cookie Recipe
Equipment
- 2 sheet pans
Ingredients
Ricotta Cookies
- 4 cups All purpose flour
- 2 cups granulated sugar
- 16 ounces Ricotta full fat
- 8 ounces Unsalted butter at room temperature
- 2 Large eggs
- 1 teaspoon Baking soda
- 1 teaspoon Baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 ½ tablespoon Vanilla extract
Lemon Glaze
- Zest of 1 large lemon finely chopped. About 1 ½ tbsp
- 2 cups Powdered sugar
- 3 tablespoon water If you like an extra lemony flavor, you can use lemon juice instead of water.
- juice of 1 lemon
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.
- In a large bowl cream butter and sugar until creamy and smooth.8 ounces Unsalted butter, 2 cups granulated sugar
- Now add ricotta, vanilla and eggs to the bowl and mix until smooth.16 ounces Ricotta, 2 Large eggs, 1 ½ tablespoon Vanilla extract
- In a separate medium sized bowl, add all of your dry ingredients.4 cups All purpose flour, 1 teaspoon Baking soda, 1 teaspoon Baking powder, ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg, ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- Mix well.
- Now add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until there is no more dry lumps of flour. The dough will be very thick and tacky.
- Place parchment paper on to 2 baking sheets.
- With a small ice cream scoop or similar, scoop out the cookie dough and place on to the cookie sheet about 2 inches apart.
- With your fingers, gently smooth the tops of the ricotta cookies.
- Place in the preheated oven and bake for about 10-12 minutes or until the cookies just start to lightly brown around the edges.
- Remove from oven and let cool completely on the pan.
Lemon Glaze
- In a medium bowl add the powdered sugar, water and lemon and mix well.Zest of 1 large lemon, 2 cups Powdered sugar, 3 tablespoon water, juice of 1 lemon
- The consistency should be thin but not too thin. You should be able to scoop the glaze with a regular spoon and watch it slowly drizzle off the spoon.
- If the glaze is too thick, just add a touch of water and re mix until it becomes the right consistency.
Adding Lemon Glaze to the Ricotta Cookies
- Once the cookies are completely cool, scoop one tablespoon of the glaze and drizzle over the first cookie as evenly as possible.
- Repeat this step for the remaining cookies.
- Allow the glaze to dry then serve immediately.
Fran says
I love lemon cookies and these were perfect. Not too much lemon but just right!
CAROL says
THERE;S NO LEMON JUICE IN THE GLAZE?
kisitalian says
Hi Carol. The glaze has lemon zest for the lemon flavor. If you prefer even more lemon flavor than that, you can make the glaze with lemon juice and omit the water. Hope this helps 🙂