Cucidati

Together, Mom and I made Italian cucidati cookies from an old family recipe. It took three days. The first day I had to grind the dates, figs and nuts - which was hard at first because we forgot to put the blade in the grinder! We also started with bad figs and dates so I had to run to the store and buy new ones. Then the dough had to be made. Those things took hours.

The next day, the cookies had to be made. That meant rolling out the fine pastry dough, putting out rows of filling, cutting the dough in slices, rolling up the dough around the filling then slicing the cookies.

Today was the fun part. Icing and decorating. Finger licking good. Mom iced (with her fingers) then passed the gooey cookies to me and I got to sprinkle them. As you can see from the missing spots on the table, the bakers also sampled a few. They were oh, so good.

I don't know how my mother used to make these by herself for so many years, and multiple batches at that. They were a massive amount of work. One batch only made 130 cookies (which I could eat in one sitting, Mmm!)

We divided them up but I gave her more than half. She gets company and they eat hers while I'm the only one who consumes mine. She made me promise not to give any of mine away. Cucidati are like gold in my family!

The idea was to pass down to me how to make these cookies so it wouldn't be lost. Mom was the last generation in the family who knew how to make them. God willing, she will be standing over my shoulder next year telling me all of the wrong things I am doing while I try them on my own :-)