Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Sweets
Sicily's extraordinary pastries are rich in colour and elaborately designed. The queen of
Sicilian desserts, the
cassata,
is made with ricotta, sugar, vanilla, diced chocolate and can-
died fruits. The equally famous
cannoli,
pastry tubes filled with sweetened ricotta and
sometimes finished off with candied fruit, chocolate pieces or crumbled pistachios, are
found pretty much everywhere. Another ubiquitous treat is
frutta di Martorana
, named
after the church in Palermo that first began producing them. These marzipan confections,
shaped to resemble fruits (or whatever takes the creator's fancy), are part of a Sicilian tra-
dition that dates back to the Middle Ages. In late October they're sold in stalls around
Palermo in anticipation of Ognissanti (All Souls' Day), but they're also commonly avail-
able year-round in painted souvenir boxes throughout Sicily.
Other Sicilian sweets worth sampling are
paste di mandorle
(almond cookies),
gelo di
melone
(something like watermelon jelly),
biscotti regina
(sesame-coated biscuits that ori-
ginated in Palermo but are now widely available throughout the island),
cassatelle
(pouches of dough stuffed with sweetened ricotta and chocolate, originally from Trapani
province),
cuccia
(an Arab cake made with grain, honey and ricotta, sold in western Si-
cily) and
sfogli polizzani
(a speciality of Polizzi Generosa in the Madonie mountains,
made with chocolate, cinnamon and fresh sheep's milk cheese).
Plenty of seasonal treats are prepared in conjunction with religious festivals. These in-
clude the cute little
pecorelle di marzapane
(marzipan lambs) that start appearing in pastry
shop windows around Easter Week,
pupe
(sugar dolls made to celebrate All Souls' Day on
1 November),
ucchiuzzi
(biscuits shaped like eyes, made for the Festa di Santa Lucia on
13 December) and
buccellati
(dough rings stuffed with minced figs, raisins, almonds, can-
died fruit and/or orange peel, especially popular around Christmas).
Looking for something a little more daring? A good place to start is the southeastern
town of Modica, where you can try chocolate laced with spicy peppers (prepared from an
Aztec recipe brought here directly from Mexico when Sicily was under Spanish rule) or
'mpanatigghi
(Modican pastries stuffed with minced meat, almonds, chocolate, cloves and
cinnamon).
Ever wonder where Sicily's two favourite desserts got their names?
Cassata
comes from the Arabic word
qas'ah
, referring to the terracotta bowl used to shape the cake;
cannolo
comes from
canna
(cane, as in sugar
cane).
