Per la versione italiana fai clic qui.
Scarcelle are lovely Apulian Easter cookies with different shapes – baskets, chicks, garlands, Easter bells, little lambs, eggs – often prepared as plain biscuits and sometimes filled with jam and almond paste. In this version I find them truly irresistible.
Growing up in Puglia I used to eat them when I was a child and some friends of my parents’ brought them as a gift from the Salento area. Like all kids, I loved them for their pretty shapes as well as for the decorations, made with white sugar frosting and little crunchy silver or multicoloured sugar “beads”. Nowadays I love them because they taste great and because they remind me of my childhood.
Last year I made them for the first time when I decided to feature them in my cookbook “Cucina di casa mia” – the recipe you find here is the one from the book – and once again I enjoyed them very much. In this version they are not super sweet – I don’t use the white, sugary icing – and have that lovely taste given by the grated lemon and orange peel which makes them even more appetizing. And they’re so colourful and happy-making!
Prepare lots of them and give them to friends and family as it’s traditionally done in Puglia during Holy Week.
Tip: to make beautiful, regular shapes you can use large cookie cutters or you can draw the desired silhouettes on thin cardboard, cut them and then place them on the dough to cut it more neatly. I simply used a pasta wheel cutter.
The scarcelle you see photographed by Dutch food photographer Jan Bartelsman for my book have been cut with architectorial precision by Claudio Varone, my friend and mythical companion of culinary experimentations who helped me to prepare some of the sweets when cooking for my cookbook. :)
Scarcelle (Apulian Easter cookies)
Preparation: 20 minutes
Resting time: 40 minutes
Oven: 20-25 minutes
For 5-6 scarcelle
500 g plain flour + a little extra
7 g instant baking powder
200 g of sugar
1 dl of extra virgin olive oil
2 + 1 eggs
5 tablespoons milk
grated zest of 1 lemon
grated zest of 1/2 orange
1 pinch of salt
5-6 hard-boiled eggs
coloured sugar "beads"
Preheat the oven to 180 ° C.
Mix flour and baking powder, then add the sugar, the olive oil, 2 eggs, milk, lemon and orange zest and a pinch of salt.
Mix all ingredients together, preferably in a blender with a special dough hook. If the dough is too stiff, add a few tablespoons of milk and mix further. If it’s too sticky, add a little extra flour.
Live to rest for 40 minutes inside the bowl covered with cling film and keep warm. Meanwhile, boil 5-6 eggs and let them cool.
Dust the working surface with flour and roll out the dough with a rolling pin to a thickness of about 8 mm – 1 cm. Cut the desired shapes (approx. 15 x 13 cm) and place your scarcelle on a baking sheet covered with baking parchment.
Prepare enough strips or small braids with the scraps of dough and make sure they are long enough to allow you to secure the hard-boiled eggs to the scarcelle.
Place one egg on each scarcella and secure it with two strips or braids of dough crossing each other (see photos). Press the ends well so that they adhere to the scarcelle.
Beat an egg and brush the scarcelle with it using a pastry brush. Decorate with coloured or silver sugar beads that will stick to the beaten egg.
Bake the scarcelle for about 20 minutes or until they are golden brown.
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