Cuccidati

What can I say, packing, our recent move, unpacking, the Holidays, it's been a busy time. Not to mention all my work related events keeping me away from doing stuff that is more or less a guilty pleasure.

We did break in our new home by having our families up for Thanksgiving. I took the entire week off and during one of my shopping excursions I came across a 'Fig and Ginger Jam'. Seeing this reminded me of one of my favorite Christmas cookies that my Grandmother used to make. The cookies are called Cuccidati, and they are a traditional Italian (actually Sicilian) Christmas cookie made with figs and dates.

It's been a long time since I have had these cookies, as my Grandmother passed away many years ago, and although my Father loved to bake he really wasn't into baking cookies. So I called my Aunt to see if she had the recipe, which of course she did. Unfortunately for me the recipe was for >250 cookies!! I don't think I ever realized how hard my Grandmother worked preparing all the cookies that she made for the Holidays.

I decided that I needed to make these cookies for our Thanksgiving in our new home.

The cookie filling is a mixture of figs, dates, raisins, nuts, orange, honey, spices (cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves) sometimes brandy is added, sometimes pineapple and other subtleties. Back in the day my Grandmother chopped all of the ingredients by hand.

Anyway, I did some online searching and found many variations as to the filling as well as the presentation of this cookie. In the end, I thought that I would modify my Grandmothers recipe a bit and adjust the filling based on my own taste. I stuck to the basic ingredients but also used dried cherries instead of pineapple, I used almonds but not walnuts, I left out the candied fruit altogether and decided to add a little rum to the mixture. Of course I used a food processor to chop everything. Once the filling is made it has to sit in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours, though mine stayed in for a day or 2.

Making the dough, refrigerating that, rolling it out, filling and cutting the cookies also turned out to be somewhat labor intensive and I began to wonder if I should have given this decision more thought.

In the end, the cookies were not exactly like my Grandmothers, they ended up being a bit larger, the dough was different in that I used butter instead of Crisco, (I think butter makes almost anything better), and I had a little trouble with the consistency of the frosting early on. All-in all, they were pretty good and brought back memories of my Grandmothers cookies and Holidays spent with my Family.

I decided to make another batch for Christmas.