Italian Wine Cookies

We love these soft cookies in my family.  They are usually made at Christmas time but are excellent any time during the year.
In years past, they were shaped like little Italian cigarellos, long and thin.  Days for tempting your kids with cigarettes or cigars are long past so shaping them in circles is the norm these days.

INGREDIENTS:
2 1/2 to 3 Cups All Purpose Flour
6 oz. Red Wine.   Note: If you like the taste of the wine, they are fine for cookies.
6 oz. White Granulated Sugar
6 oz. Vegetable Oil
2 Tablespoons Baking Powder
1 teaspoon Vanilla
Pinch of Salt
1 Cup of Walnuts, Crushed after measuring.

Start with 2 1/2 Cups Flour in a large bowl.  I use a wooden spoon for my mixing process.
Add the Wine, Sugar, Oil, Baking Powder, Vanilla, and Salt.
Mix this all up thoroughly with your wooden spoon til it looks like wet and combined.

As you can see the mixture looks wet as its being stirred together.  You may want to add up to another half cup of flour to the mixture so it stirs together well.  You want it wet, but not too wet.  The right feel comes with practice.

When all the wet and dry ingredients are together, add the crushed walnuts and again, stir the mixture together with the wooden spoon.

When its mixed, I take my hands and push it altogether.   It will look as it does above.  A wet lump.

You can make your own cinnamon sugar mix, but I prefer to buy it already mixed from McCormick.  These containers are just under 4 oz. in weight.  I will use about 2/3 to 3/4 of one container for this recipe.

Pour some cinnamon sugar in a small bowl.

Take some mixture and roll it in your palms into a small ball.  It looks and feels wet and it should.

Roll the balls thoroughly in the cinnamon sugar mixture in the bowl.  You want them completely covered in cinnamon sugar.

Lay parchment paper on your baking sheets.  I'm using small baking sheets that only measure 9.5 by 13 inches.  I can put 2 of these side by side in the center of my oven.  I only bake two sheets at a time to keep the heat even all around.

Use the bottom of a drinking glass to flatten your balls to a nice, round circle about a quarter inch thick.

Cooking on parchment, I bake mine in a preheated 350*F oven for 12 mins., no longer.  You want soft cookies, not hard ones.  They should look like this when done.

Mine measure around 3 to 3 1/2 inches across.  

If you forget to flatten out your balls like I did for these last 4 small ones above, its fine.  They will cook, but in a puffed shape instead of flattened, as you can see.

I managed to get 3 dozen cookies today.  Depending on the size you make them, you can have more by making the balls smaller.
These cookies are soft in the middle and just have a bit of crispness on the outside, just enough not to fall apart.

My kids and grandkids are coming over Christmas Eve and will take home with them Christmas goodies that are so familiar to our family which include these Italian Wine Cookies and Homemade Old-fashioned Hershey cocoa chocolate fudge among them.  I also made peanut butter fudge with and without nuts, and peanut butter balls, sometimes called Buckeyes in the Midwest.   The piece de resistance will be my Lithuanian Bundies (meat filled hand-sized pastry).

I am trying to be good and not over indulge.  I don't want to gain too much weight over the Holidays so I won't have as much to lose afterwards.  There's always a price to pay for eating well.  Thankfully these days only come once a year and gaining pounds from Thanksgiving to Christmas is normal in my family.

Have a good Day.