Week 18, December 20, 2010: Cuccidate

Hi all,

Merry Christmas or a very happy belated Hanukkah... the holidays at cake:30 were super busy and very delightful, so I haven't had much time to write.  I've been too occupied with cooking, baking, cleaning and hanging out with...

My favorite person on earth.

Being a fairy god-mother/ crazy aunt is awesome, but has several responsibilities.  You have to know quality stories, be comfy for nap time, have bath time songs, make delicious desserts and of course, know where that naughty Kevin is at all times.

This week's recipe was cuccidate: an Italian fig cookie.  The recipe was my great-grandmother's, passed down to me from my Nana... not sure how long it's been in the family, but I can safely say 100 years... I can give you an outline of the ingredients-- the original recipe didn't have any amounts written on it, except for figs- you need about three pounds.

For the dough, mix leaveners, flour, sugar and crisco.  Add milk as needed to get it to rolling consistency.

The filling:

Roll your sleeves up and prepare for the arm workout of a lifetime.  Ground together figs, walnuts, raisins, cherries, chocolate chips and whole oranges.

They'll look like this:

 Add cherry juice, honey, and spices...

This is over a five hour process normally, from starting the dough and filling to frosting the last, so Ang (Mom) and I spread it out over a two day period- this year, we made the mixes the night before at her house and baked at mine.

Ang rolls the dough so fast she's like a blur.

Mom made the majority of the cookies- there were 271 in total (including gigilana that were made with the left over dough).  I was in charge of baking, making frosting and more dough when needed.

Our set up was pretty simple: making table in the diningroom with the cooling/ frosting table set up behind it.

After rolling the dough into strips, Ang added filling, folded them over and cut them diagonally.

When we ran out of filling, she made gigilana with the leftover dough and sesame seeds.

The frosting is my absolute favorite in the world: powdered sugar, melted butter, vanilla and milk.  So simple, but so tasty.

 We started with green...

 Then did yellow...

 And pink and blue followed.

 Angie had a good time frosting and adding the nonpareils-- it took four sweeps of the living room, dining room and kitchen to get them from attempting to hang out with my socks.

This was the monster one, Ang called the log-- we shared it with some tea after our hard work was done.

Next week: chocolate cheesecake and cranberry cheesecake.... Responsible for a birthday cheesecake and a Christmas day cheesecake-- I'll let you know how they went over.