QUEEN’S BISCUITS

(Biscotti Regina)

Makes 3 dozen biscuits

425 g/15 oz flour

175 g/6 oz sugar

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

125 g/4 oz lard

2 egg yolks

¼ teaspoon vanilla

125 ml/4 fl oz milk or less

2 egg whites, lightly beaten

150 g/5 oz sesame seeds

Sift the flour, sugar, and cinnamon into a large mixing bowl, and cut in the lard until the mixture reaches the texture of a coarse meal. Add the egg yolks, vanilla, and as much milk as is necessary to hold the dough together. Knead for a minute and then shape the dough into finger-shaped pieces about 4 cm/1½ inches long. Roll each piece first in the egg whites and then in the sesame seeds so that it is well covered with a layer of seeds. Place on a greased baking tray and bake in a preheated 180C/350F/gas mark 4 oven about 30 minutes or until lightly browned.

The cake that made Alciphron’s mouth water brings to mind a whole range of filled pastries that are to be found under different names throughout the island, especially at Christmastime. The most common of these are fig-filled biscuits called cuddureddi, a name said to derive from kollura, a Greek word for cake or bun. For Sicilian families, the preparation of huge batches of these biscuits to offer holiday visitors is a festive occasion similar to that which baking gingerbread men provided in my childhood, and cuddureddi, which can be moulded into different shapes and sprinkled with coloured sugar and other trimmings, offer almost the same scope for creativity. They can be made either with plain flour or with durum-wheat flour. The latter will take a little more milk and will give a coarser, more rustic pastry.