Maria DiRico, author of The Witless Protection Program, A Catering Hall mystery, is visiting Ascroft, eh? today to tell us a bit about the Ubiquitous Ricotta Containers and How They led to a Recipe.

Welcome, Maria. I’ll turn the floor over to you –

There’s a running bit in my Catering Hall Mystery series about how my protagonist Mia’s grandmother Elisabetta always gives people leftovers in empty old ricotta containers. This comes from my own life.

My mother was born in Italy and came to America when she was three years old in 1930. During the following decades, the rest of her family immigrated to the United States. Elisabetta is inspired a bit by my mother but mostly by her mother, my “nonna.” (That’s Italian for grandmother). Despite the fact Nonna lived in this country for sixty years, Italian remained her primary language and Italian food her primary cuisine. (Although she did love pancakes. We took her to IHOP every year for her birthday!)

A lot of ricotta and mozzarella went into Nonna’s cooking, which resulted in a collection of empty Polly-O containers. Before there was recycling, there was Nonna-cycling. No empty Polly-O container went unused. We left family holidays and get-togethers with a collection of containers containing gravy (that’s what we called red sauce), pasta, homemade meatballs, and for dessert, ricotta cookies.

When I was contemplating recipes to include in The Witless Protection Program, my 5^th Catering Hall Mystery, I decided I had to include a ricotta-inspired recipe. I adapted one for ricotta cookies, and they were delicious.

As an homage to Nonna and those Polly-O containers I grew up with, I’m sharing the recipe with you today. And I paid homage to Nonna in another way: “Maria DiRico,” my pen name, was her maiden name.

RICOTTA SUGAR COOKIES

½ cup butter

1 cup granulated sugar (I’m a fan of finely ground baking sugar)

1 cup whole milk ricotta

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (you can also substitute almond or rum extract)

1 large egg

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

Glazed Icing Ingredients:

1 ½ cups confectioner’s sugar

3 tablespoons milk (more if needed to thin the glaze)

½ teaspoon vanilla

Optional:

Decorative sprinkles

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

With a fork, mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar together. Use a low speed blender to combine the ingredients first, then increase the speed and beat the butter and sugar until they’re fluffy.

Using the medium speed on your blender, beat in the egg, ricotta, and vanilla (or flavoring of your choice.) On a low speed, slowly add the flour mixture and beat until a dough forms.

Chill the dough for at least several hours.

When ready to bake, either drop the dough by tablespoonfuls or form balls and place them on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. (You’ll need two sheets or to use the one sheet twice.)

Bake 12-15 minutes, until lightly golden along the bottom. Remove from oven and let the cookies cool completely.

While the cookies are cooling, mix the powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk together to form the icing glaze. Add more milk if needed to achieve a medium-thin consistency.

Dip each cookie in the glaze so either the top or whole cookie is covered. If you’re decorating the cookies with sprinkles, do it now before the glaze hardens.

Makes approx. 2 dozen cookies, depending on size.

Thank you for sharing this with us, Maria, and good luck with The Witless Protection Program, the latest book in the Catering Hall mystery series.

Readers can learn more about Maria by visiting the author’s website and Chicks on the Case as well as her Facebook and Twitter pages.

The book is available online at the following retailers:

 Amazon – B&N – Kobo –Bookshop.org – Kensington

About Maria DiRico: Maria DiRico is the pseudonym for Ellen Byron, author of the award-winning, USA Today bestselling Cajun Country Mysteries. Born in Queens, New York, she is a first-generation Italian-American on her mother’s side and the granddaughter of a low-level Jewish mobster on her father’s side. She grew up visiting the Astoria Manor and Grand Bay Marina catering halls, which were run by her Italian mother’s family in Queens and have become the inspiration for her Catering Hall Mystery Series. DiRico has been a writer-producer for hit television series like Wings and Just Shoot Me, and her first play, Graceland, appears in the Best Short Plays collection. She’s a freelance journalist, with over 200 articles published in national magazines, and previously worked as a cater-waiter for Martha Stewart, a credit she never tires of sharing. A native New Yorker who attended Tulane University, Ellen lives in Los Angeles with her husband, daughter, and two rescue dogs.