Cuccidati are a Sicilian Christmas cookie that I've never made before. My family is not Sicilian so none of my relatives made this delicacy. It is a pastry filled with figs, raisins, other dried fruits, nuts, honey, orange rind and other good things. I spent the better part of two days making them. I was inspired by Clara (
Great Depression Cooking with Clara) although I altered her recipe a bit after googling "cuccidati" and comparing a number of recipes. She definitely had too many eggs in her dough. I cut it down to 8 instead of 12. I also had no dates or yellow raisins on hand so used dried cranberries and other dried fruits that were in the cupboard. The figs are a must however as they are essentially fig cookies.
The dough - 10 cups of flour, plus sugar, lard, eggs, milk, vanilla, salt, baking powder.
The filling was done yesterday. Put all the fruit and nuts through a meat grinder and added the other ingredients along with some Jim Beam and let it sit in the refrigerator over night.
Roll out the dough and put in a row of filling
Fold the dough over the filling and cut off the dough
Cutting the cuccidati and then score them (see photo below)
Just out of the oven
Frost the cookies with confectioners' sugar and lemon/water frosting
Put on some red and green sugar (traditionally you use colored sprinkles (nonpareils) but I improvised and made colored sugar.
On the plate
Cookbook close-up
Yummie - MUCH better than a fig newton.
Albert and David were the first to try the cuccidati and gave thumbs up.
Time to go out for some fresh air
Benni enjoying a stick
Woodpile
Leon's favorite piece of machinery (sarcasm).
No this is not a strand of DNA. Oh, the holidays.
By the way - DADT is finally history. Finally Obama keeps a promise. Another step toward equality.
3 comments:
We ain't got none o'them coochy-cootie cookies down thisaway . . . but the Jim Beam is a freakin' great idea!
I'll send you some, though I'm sure there are some closeted Sicilians down thataway who can oblige. Jim Beam had been hiding in the liquor cabinet for years...so I put him to good use.
My husband and his family are Sicilian, but I've never seen any of them make anything like this. They look terrific.
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