The best are traditional biscuits that you can rediscover. I present you delicious shortbread cookies with corn flour. This is a Piedmontese specialty that you can eat for breakfast, dessert, but are also perfect after dinner, with a glass of good Italian wine in which to dip these shortbread cookies.
Paste di meliga are delicious shortbread cookies in the shape of a grinder wheel, made of corn flour, they are typical cookies from Piedmont , and more specifically from the area of Cuneo, where corn is called melia or meliga in the dialect.
The recipe of paste di meliga is very simple, it was born in times of poverty, when the wheat harvest was not particularly abundant, so wheat flour was mixed with corn flour.
Ingredients
- 250 g of cold butter
- 250 g of wheat flour
- 130 g of corn flour
- 110 g of powdered sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 yolk
- 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract
- grated zest of 1 lemon
- pinch of salt
To make cornmeal cakes, start by pouring wheat flour, cornstarch, and powdered sugar into the bowl. Mix thoroughly.
Add the diced butter, vanilla and lemon zest. Then add the egg, yolk and salt, knead thoroughly until a soft dough is obtained.
At this stage, pay attention to the consistency of the dough, which must not be too brittle (otherwise the biscuits will melt during baking), but also too firm (otherwise it cannot be squeezed out of a dough bag).
Transfer the dough into a pastry bag with a 15mm star-shaped tip and form circles on two baking sheets lined with baking paper. I opted for a smaller cookie size than in the original recipe.
Bake at 180 degrees C for 12-15 minutes or until light browning. Remove from oven and serve.
You can sprinkle lightly with powdered sugar.