Italian Knot Cookies

Another request. Marissa asked if I could make these. They turned out great. These are more or less a sugar cookie with a Anise frosting (this could easily be switched out for any flavoring).

Based on this recipe.

Italian Knot Cookies

Cookie:
1 Cup (8 oz) cream cheese
1/2 Cup (4 oz) butter
1 cup sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
5 teaspoons baking powder
5 cups flour

Icing:
2 cups Powdered Sugar
3-4 tablespoons of milk
1/2 teaspoon Anise extract

Hundreds and Thousands (aka Sprinkles)

Makes a (insert whatever expletive you think is appropriate) ton.
Prep: 30 mins to 2 hours
Cooking: 6 mins per batch.

So these cookies are hand formed, so you can make them as big as you want, or tiny like I did. I know my audience, so I tend to make small finger cookies, not big ones. After 50 mins of hand rolling and 'tie-ing' a hole bunch of cookies, I started experimenting with shape and size. You can make 2 dozen huge ones or a whole bunch of small ones. It is up to you, and your hands.

You can do this in a mixer, I chose this time to hand mix it. Throw in softened butter and cream cheese, add sugar and beat until smooth and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla. In a separate bowl combine flour and baking powder. Slowly add flour mix to above batter. This will start to form a dough that gets really hard to 'stir.' Remove and kneed in remaining flour until workable. Mound all of this in one big ball right next to your work surface.

Pull out an ungreased cookie sheet. Now get ready to tie. Grab some dough, roll between your hands (you will need to get flour on them to keep the dough from sticking to your hands) and roll/tie in to knots. Or whatever else you want. If you don't want to deal with knotting you can just twist them in to little spirals too.

Once you have a pan ready, throw it in the over for a short amount of time. You are just lightly baking them. You only want the bottom to turn brown. In my oven, I just cooked them for 6 minutes. If you have big ones, go a little longer. This takes a little modification per batch. You can figure it out.

Remove from pan, cool on racks.

When cooling, get ready to frost them. Combine all the frosting things together, milk last, only little bits at a time. It is really easy to make it too runny. If you need it thicker add more sugar, if it is too thick add some milk.

Dip each cookie in the frosting, place on wax paper. Sprinkle with hundreds and thousands. (not to be confused with jimmies or sprinkles). Eat. Enjoy!

After being introduced to the word 'jimmy' in Pittsburgh, I have looked in to the naming convention of sprinkle-able items. Look it up.

These reminded me of those little frosted animal cookies, the pink and white ones.