Tiny Peach & Almond Cookies with Ricotta Cream

There is something irresistibly appealing about these blushing little almond cookies shaped and painted to look like peaches and filled with ricotta cream. I love a culinary trompe l’oeil, and I’ve seen and coveted these often in pastry shops in many parts of Italy. They’re perhaps not the sort of thing you’d make every day, as they are a little fiddly (though not complicated), but, much like macaroons, they are exquisitely beautiful, dainty and feminine. They would be the perfect thing to make as a gift, or for birthdays, parties or weddings. The traditional method of blushing the peaches pink is to paint them with Alchermes, a vivid scarlet Italian liqueur flavoured with a mixture of spices including nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla, which originally derived its colour from scale insects called Kermes. Modern production leaves out the insects, though it’s a drink that still divides opinion, and though many traditional southern Italian dolci include it I have offered some alternatives. To accentuate the ground almonds (almond meal) in the cookie dough, I like to paint the cookies with Amaretto, which has a less divisive flavour, combined with a splash of Alchermes for colour and the slightest spicy background note.

I fill my peaches with ricotta cream, though there are many other variations. Sometimes they are filled with apricot (or peach) jam, sometimes with pastry cream. Often — as the cherry on the trompe l’oeil cake — the cookies are then stuffed with a whole almond to replicate the peach stone.

There is something irresistibly appealing about these blushing little almond cookies shaped and painted to look like peaches and filled with ricotta cream. I love a culinary trompe l’oeil, and I’ve seen and coveted these often in pastry shops in many parts of Italy. They’re perhaps not the sort of thing you’d make every day, as they are a little fiddly (though not complicated), but, much like macaroons, they are exquisitely beautiful, dainty and feminine. They would be the perfect thing to make as a gift, or for birthdays, parties or weddings. The traditional method of blushing the peaches pink is to paint them with Alchermes, a vivid scarlet Italian liqueur flavoured with a mixture of spices including nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla, which originally derived its colour from scale insects called Kermes. Modern production leaves out the insects, though it’s a drink that still divides opinion, and though many traditional southern Italian dolci include it I have offered some alternatives. To accentuate the ground almonds (almond meal) in the cookie dough, I like to paint the cookies with Amaretto, which has a less divisive flavour, combined with a splash of Alchermes for colour and the slightest spicy background note.

I fill my peaches with ricotta cream, though there are many other variations. Sometimes they are filled with apricot (or peach) jam, sometimes with pastry cream. Often — as the cherry on the trompe l’oeil cake — the cookies are then stuffed with a whole almond to replicate the peach stone.