Cottage Cheese Cookies

Name: Cottage Cheese Cookies Recipe: Soft Homemade Cookies for Tea
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 45 min
Total time: 1 h
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Cottage cheese, 5% fat 300 g; All-purpose flour 2 cups (260 g); Butter 100 g; Egg 1; Brown sugar 3–4 tbsp (41–55 g); Baking powder 1/3 sachet; Orange zest 1 tbsp (6 g); Vanilla to taste; Egg 1; White sugar 1 tsp (5 g); Powdered sugar optional

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Homemade cottage cheese cookies are very easy to make, and they turn out great even with store-bought medium-fat cottage cheese. They are wonderfully tender and smell like the vanilla glazed curd bars I adored as a kid. They look like tiny golden buns with a springy crust and an incredibly fragrant, soft crumb inside.

Instead of regular cottage cheese, you can use Italian ricotta. Although the two are made differently, they are interchangeable in baking. When I was little, my grandmother made homemade cottage cheese from cow’s milk. There was plenty of it, and it made the best breakfast, especially with fresh milk straight from the cow. And of course, cottage cheese pies were a big favorite! Although, to be honest, we didn’t bake pies all that often.

Cottage cheese with 5-10% fat is considered classic. Lower fat makes it a bit “dry”, while higher fat makes it almost creamy. By the way, the usual kind is often missing from store shelves, so in home cooking we simply mix two types of cottage cheese. To make the baked goods even better, people add vanilla, sugar, citrus zest, raisins, dried apricots and so on.

Because of its grainy texture, cottage cheese usually needs to be pressed through a sieve or blended before it goes into the dough. That said, when baking a cottage cheese cake, larger curds work better. But for a filling for vatrushka buns, the cottage cheese should be smooth. And, of course, it has to be fresh and preferably not too sour.

Homemade or farmers’ market cottage cheese is usually quite high in fat. Keep this in mind so the cookies don’t end up too heavy in calories. Store-bought small-curd cottage cheese with 5% fat works very well. It is soft and blends easily into the dough.

Homemade cottage cheese cookies are made from a so-called curd mixture with flour added. It contains butter, eggs and sugar. Adjust the amount of butter to the fat content of the cottage cheese, and the sugar entirely to taste. You will only know how much flour the dough needs while kneading, since the moisture of the cottage cheese affects it a lot. It is worth adding baking powder to make the cookies fluffier and softer.

Homemade cottage cheese cookies are the perfect treat with tea.

Ingredients

12–15 cookies

Cottage cheese, 5% fat 300 g
All-purpose flour 2 cups (260 g)
Butter 100 g
Egg 1
Brown sugar 3–4 tbsp (41–55 g)
Baking powder 1/3 sachet
Orange zest 1 tbsp (6 g)
Vanilla to taste

Egg 1
White sugar 1 tsp (5 g)
Powdered sugar optional

Step-by-step recipe

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Making the curd mixture

The cookies bake in under an hour, and the dough comes together in one go in 10–15 mins.

Turn on the oven in advance and preheat it to 180–190°C. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. There is no need to grease the paper — the cookies don’t stick to it at all.

Make the curd mixture. If the cottage cheese is very coarse, press it through a sieve or run it through a meat grinder. Combine the cottage cheese with one egg and add the sugar. When my daughter and I made these, we used brown sugar for half of the total amount, as it is more aromatic. But if you can’t find it, feel free to use regular white sugar. Add vanilla — concentrated liquid vanilla is handy here. Add the softened butter and grate in 1 tbsp of orange zest (6 g). Mix everything until evenly combined — a mixer on low speed makes this easy.

Kneading the dough

Next comes the important part: adding the flour. The moisture of the cottage cheese strongly affects how much flour the dough needs.

Add baking powder to the mixture. A sachet is usually meant for 1 kg of flour; we added about a third of a sachet so the cookies would turn out a little fluffier.
Add the flour in portions, stirring the dough each time.
Once the dough gets firmer, turn it out onto the table or a silicone mat. Knead with your hands, adding flour, until it no longer sticks to your hands at all.
The final dough should be like the dough for pelmeni or cinnamon rolls: firm, but easy to knead by hand. Dough that is too stiff will bake up hard and won’t rise.

Shaping the cookies

Roll the dough into a sheet 4–5 mm thick. Try to shape it into a rectangle. Roll one long edge out a bit more with the rolling pin so it is half as thick. This edge will be on the outside. Carefully roll the sheet into a log, starting from the thicker long edge. Press the rolled dough lightly with your hands so the thin edge sticks well.

Carefully cut the log into pieces about the size of a small egg — this amount of ingredients usually makes 12–15 cookies. To make them look pretty, cut them with a crinkle knife rather than a regular one — we use one for slicing vegetables.
Arrange all the cookies on the lined baking sheet.
To make the cookies golden, beat the second egg with a fork and brush a thin layer over the tops. Then sprinkle with white sugar.
You can also bake them just like that, or brush the tops with wet hands and sprinkle with sugar.

Baking

Put the baking sheet in the hot oven. If everything is done right, baking usually takes 40–45 mins.
The cookies rise a little thanks to the moisture and baking powder. The tops brown quickly and the sugar crystals caramelize. By the way, the smell fills the whole house.
Check doneness by the golden color of the tops and with a toothpick. Let the cookies cool completely.

Serving

Serve with tea on a tray or in a wicker basket. If you like, dust the cookies with powdered sugar. Cover them with a paper or cloth napkin.
The cookies don’t keep long, so it is best to bake just enough for one sitting.

Calories and macros

328 kcal

100 g

Protein12.7 g16% of kcal
Fat15 g42% of kcal
Carbs34.6 g43% of kcal

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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To Get It Right

How much baking powder

We use a third of a sachet meant for 1 kg of flour — that is a dose for roughly 330 g of flour. If your sachet is meant for 500 g of flour, use about two thirds of it (roughly 1.5 tsp).

Sugar to taste

3–4 tbsp of sugar (41–55 g) make cookies that are not very sweet: one reader used 3 tbsp and got soft, airy, mildly sweet cookies. Another made them with 500 g of cottage cheese and used about 4 tbsp.

Add-ins

Besides vanilla and orange zest, raisins, dried apricots and other citrus zest work well in the cottage cheese dough.

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Questions and answers

How do you make cottage cheese cookies fluffy and soft?

Don’t overload the dough with flour: it should be firm but soft and easy to knead by hand. Baking powder adds fluffiness, and over-baked cookies lose their softness — take them out as soon as they are golden and a toothpick comes out dry.

Can you make cottage cheese cookies without butter?

The amount of butter depends on the fat content of the cottage cheese: with rich homemade cottage cheese you can use less. Without any butter the cookies will be drier and denser.

Can you make these cookies with ricotta instead of cottage cheese?

Yes. Cottage cheese and ricotta are made differently, but they are interchangeable in baking. You may need a little more flour if the ricotta is wet.

How do you make crumbly cottage cheese cookies?

These cookies come out soft, like tiny buns. Crumbly cookies are made from shortcrust dough with plenty of butter — for example, homemade shortbread cookies.

Can you make cottage cheese cookies with apples?

Yes: grate or finely chop 1 sweet-tart apple, squeeze out a little juice and stir it into the curd mixture before the flour. The dough will take a bit more flour.

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