Italians aren’t big breakfast eaters. A typical ‘colazione’ includes several cookies you can dip into hot tea or coffee.  When I lived in Italy, I got to know many of the Mulino Bianco varieties, but my all-time favorite are macine. I found them at Carlino’s last weekend!

Made with panna (cream), these cookies are recognizable by their circular form and mild flavor, perfect for soaking up your liquid of choice. I ate a few this morning in place of my typical sprouted grain bread with nut butter. While pleasant, they did nothing to fuel my bicycle commute or knowledge work. Think I’ll have to Americanize them into a new category: snack with low nutritional value. Who says you have to keep all the Italian traditions?

Last year at Chelsea Market’s Buon Italia, where you can buy Mulino Bianco products online, I snapped a picture of their “display”:

The Mulino Bianco website has the recipe for how to make these at home! How interesting. I can’t imagine Nabisco revealing the recipe for Oreos, can you? 

Here it is, in Italian, with a general translation, in case anyone is at all interested:

INGREDIENTI: 500g di farina 00 (flour); 50g di fecola (potato flour); 150g di zucchero a velo (powdered sugar); 100g di burro (butter); 100g di margarina (c’mon, this is obviously margarine); 1 uovo (egg); 5 cucchiai di panna (tablespoons of cream); una bustina di zucchero vanigliato (a packet of vanilla sugar); una bustina di lievito (a packet of yeast); un pizzico di sale (pinch of salt).

Lavorare insieme gli ingredienti, stendere una sfoglia alta 7 mm circa e con un bicchiere infarinato sull’orlo, tagliare i biscotti. Cuocere in forno a 180° C per 10-15 minuti, su una teglia imburrata.

Work the ingredients together and roll out the dough into a 7mm thick sheet. Cut circular forms with a glass whose rim is dipped in flour, and cook in a 350 degree oven on a nonstick pan for 10-15 minutes. 

Where the heck would one buy potato flour? While I’d like to investigate this further, I’m beginning to notice a disturbing pattern in my blog posts over the past few weeks: seems the sweets are seducing me once again! Time to channel my creative energies back into vegetables … maybe next week. I’ve got sorbetto and profiteroles to test out.