Rococo – Italian Christmas Biscuits | For Food's Sake – A Sydney Food Blog

Bianca: Christmas is always an exciting time for families, with each having their own traditions and celebrating with their own special Christmas recipes. Our Italian celebrations were always quite elaborate with rotating hosts, a myriad of dishes but always a pasta main, leaving little room for much else (but don’t worry, we certainly eat seconds and thirds). Another constant in our Christmas’s growing up are our Nonna Assunta’s famous biscuits. With our favourite being her ‘Rococo’ biscuits, there really isn’t anything better than one or two of these with an espresso coffee. They are baked quite hard (similar to a biscotti) so they are perfect as a dunking biscuit, word to the wise they’re like crack…or peanut butter…or Nutella!!

Now, we weren’t allowed to give away Nonna’s actual recipe, as she holds it extremely close to her heart and as I was told “It’s a secret, passed down through the generations”. Quite frankly my Nonna can be quite scary, so I’ll wait till I have her blessing. Depending on who’s around, a little working bee is generally organised as they can be quite labour intensive, my job is the egg wash and the almond placing – It’s a tough life!

Below is a recipe closely resembling Nonna’s, adapted from ‘Anna Maria’s Open Kitchen’ – http://www.annamariavolpi.com/rococo.html#.VJfHzl4AA  . It is a much more ‘user friendly’ recipe as its ingredients are easier to source.  But I will run through below, just how Nonna’s biscuits differentiate.

Rococo

–Ingredients 300g Plain flour 200g Ground Almonds 180g sugar 1 tablespoon Baking Powder 35g Unsalted Butter, diced Grated rind of 1 Lemon Grated rind of 1 Mandarin 1/2 cup White sweet wine 2 eggs, lightly beaten, plus 1 for egg wash 150g Candied peel, chopped 150g whole almonds, chopped 1 teaspoon cinnamon, ground pinch of grated nutmeg

250g Almonds halved