These Italian Anise Cookies are a perfect bite-sized Christmas cookie. They are firm on the outside, soft, and tender flavored with anise insides and topped with a sweet icing glaze. Just like grandmas recipe.

 

Did you grow up with classic Italian Christmas cookies? My family was not Italian but we had many families in our small town who were and they made the BEST cookies. Anise if you are unfamiliar, tastes like sweet black licorice.
If you are looking for other old fashioned Christmas cookies try my Whipped Shortbread Cookies or classic Butter Cookies.

If you are not a fan of licorice or anise flavoring, you could use vanilla, lemon or almond extract in the cookie dough instead. But a traditional Italian Anisette includes the anise. Most either LOVE it or HATE it. If you love it, go ahead and add anise to the simple sweet glaze that you top the cookie with for extra anise flavor.
Italians are always feeding large crowds, especially during the holidays. So, this recipe like most Italian cookie recipes makes a lot of cookies (about 70 bite sized cookies). This makes this recipe for Anise Cookies great for cookie exchanges, large crowd cookie trays or perfect when making cookie tins for gifting.

My recipe for Anise Italian Cookies includes butter and shortening which are melted together. So, no waiting for your butter to soften. The butter gives the cookie amazing flavor and the shortening gives the cookie the tender slightly soft texture.

What I love about this old fashioned cookie recipe is there is no chill time needed for the dough. So, they can be made quite quickly. Most of the time is spent scooping, rolling and topping the cookies.
You can make Italian Cookies with Anise ahead of time. If doing so more than a day ahead, I suggest making the cookie base and then refrigerating or freezing until you are ready to glaze and use sprinkles. The sprinkles tend to deteriorate over time. So, a day ahead is ok but longer and the sprinkles will not hold shape.

Anise Cookie Ingredients

When it comes to classic cookie recipes, we love how simple they keep things. You just need to raid your kitchen for some fridge and pantry staple ingredients to make these old school cookies for Christmas this year. For this Old Fashioned Anise Cookie Recipe, you just need these ingredients:

• Flour – You can just use all-purpose flour for this cookie recipe.
• Baking Powder – Don’t mix this up with baking soda!
• Salt
• Shortening – Shortening in cookie dough helps the shape and texture of your cookies. You can try using all butter, but we found that this little bit of shortening does help out.
• Butter – Cold butter or room temperature butter doesn’t matter too much, since we’re melting it.
• Sugar – We went with all white granulated sugar. These anise cookies are very light in their flavor- something like brown sugar might overpower them a bit too much.
• Eggs – room temperature is best.
• Anise Extract – The easiest way to get Anise Flavor Cookies is to use an anise extract. You can try adding a bit of star anise powder if you really want- the extract is the quickest and easiest option. I have never used anise seed in this cookie recipe.
• Powdered Sugar – Or confectioner’s sugar or icing sugar, since they’re all about the same. We need some sort of powdered sugar for icing cookies with glaze at the end of the recipe.
• Milk – The other part of our quick, 2-ingredient glaze.
• Sprinkles – Some sort of colored sprinkles or jimmies, especially in Christmas colors, are the perfect topping for these Anise Christmas Cookies.

See recipe card for quantities.

How to make Italian Anise Cookies

This is another one of those easy cookie recipes that you’ll love to make. Mix you dry ingredients, prep the wet ingredients, add the wet to the dry, bake cookies, and then top with icing and sprinkles- super simple! To make this Easy Anise Cookie Recipe, here’s all you have to do:

• Let’s start by prepping dry ingredients. To a large mixing bowl, add flour, baking powder, and salt. Whisk together and then set aside.

• Now, onto the wet ingredients. First, melt butter and shortening in a separate large mixing bowl. Once melted and mixed, add sugar. Grab a hand or stand mixer and beat to combine.

• Crack an egg and add to the bowl with the sugar and fat mixture. Beat until blended before cracking another egg and repeating until you’ve added all eggs.

• Now, measure out and add anise extract to the wet ingredients.

• Briefly beat to combine wet ingredients together.

• Gradually add dry ingredients to wet ingredients, mixing constantly and beating to incorporate before adding more. Repeat until you’ve added all the dry ingredients.

• Ingredients should eventually come together into a consistent cookie dough. It will be sticky but easily manageable. Grab dough and form into 1-inch cookie dough balls (about half a tablespoon). Set dough balls on a silpat-lined or parchment-lined baking sheet.

• Bake anisette cookies at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes or until bottom edges start to lightly brown. Move baked cookies to wire rack to cool completely. Add powdered sugar to small bowl, slowly mix in milk to form a glaze before dipping tops of cooled cookies to glaze with icing.

• Return glazed cookies to rack after topping with icing. Top with sprinkles immediately before glaze fully sets. Let dry completely before serving.

Storage / Freezing

Storage: These Anise Christmas Cookies last pretty long- even kept on the counter at room temperature. Transfer to an airtight container or ziploc bag. They’ll last up to a week at room temperature this way- or up to 2-3 weeks in the fridge! ust note that the sprinkles will mend in with the icing topping and not be as pretty.

Freezing: Frozen Anise Italian Cookies will also last quite a while. Alternatively, you can freeze cookie dough balls before baking. Baked cookies will last 1-2 months in the freezer and unbaked dough will last up to 3 months.

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