Cavallucci

Sienese spiced biscuits built on a sugar syrup, baked once and left soft inside.

Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains honey.

Ingredients

• 300 g plain flour
• 200 g caster sugar
• 60 ml water
• 40 g honey
• 100 g walnuts, chopped
• 80 g candied orange peel, chopped
• 2 teaspoons aniseed, crushed
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1/2 teaspoon ammonium carbonate, or 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• icing sugar, to dust

Method

1. Heat the sugar, water and honey to 115C, the soft ball stage. THE SYRUP IS THE METHOD: there is no fat to cream and no eggs to beat, so the cooked sugar is what carries everything else and sets the texture.
2. Off the heat, stir in the walnuts, peel, aniseed and coriander.
3. Mix the flour, salt and raising agent, then pour the hot syrup in and work quickly to a stiff paste. It stiffens as it cools and becomes unworkable, so do not stop.
4. Roll into a rope and cut 3 cm pieces. Flatten each slightly and set them well apart.
5. Bake at 170C for 15 minutes only. ONE BAKE, AND THEY COME OUT PALE AND STILL SOFT IN THE MIDDLE. That is correct — unlike cantucci or baicoli these are not meant to be hard, and a second bake would ruin them.
6. Dust heavily with icing sugar while warm. They firm up over a day but keep a chewy centre.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes