Find out which are the Neapolitan sweets you can eat at Christmas!
4 sweets to eat at Christmas
Struffoli is small balls of dough fried and covered with honey and colored sprinkles. They are probably similar to other Christmas recipes in Southern Italy. In Naples they are known by this name.
The use of honey in the recipe suggests ancient origins, probably Greek. Moreover, the word ‘struffolo’ comes from the Greek word ‘strong oulos’, round.
The pastiera
Even though pastiera is a sweet related to Easter time, nowadays Neapolitans eat it at Christmas as well.
According to the legend, the wife of a fisherman left a basket with ricotta cheese, wheat, eggs, candied fruit, and orange flowers on the beach in order to please the sea and make her husband come back home. In the morning the ingredients were mixed in order to have a pastiera.
According to more reliable sources, the recipe of pastiera was conceived in a monastery as a symbol of Easter resurrection. Many Neapolitan pastry shops, such as Caffè Gambrinus, offer their own version of pastiera.
Mustaccioli
The name of these Neapolitan Christmas pastries derives from the word ‘mustacci’ which usually indicates an aristocrat’s mustache. In pastry making, however, mustaccioli are a rhombus-shaped cookie covered in chocolate icing. Today you can also taste variations, both hard and soft.
Roccocò
The Neapolitan roccocò is baked in the oven and is made of almonds and different spices: cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg.
The recipe dates back to 1320 and was made for the first time by the sisters of the Real Convento della Maddalena. As the first roccocò resembled a shell and in French shell is called ‘rocaille’ the name probably derives from an Italianization of this term. The particularity of roccocò is the external crunchiness and the internal softness.