Sicilian Christmas Fig and Nut Cake | Buccellato Siciliano

Sep 29

11 min read

Buccellato Siciliano (Sicilian Christmas Fig and Nut Cake)

Buccellato is the ring that tells you Christmas has arrived in Sicily. A short sweet pastry is rolled around a dense paste of dried figs, raisins, almonds, walnuts, chocolate and candied orange, closed into a crown, cut open on the surface and baked until the pastry sets around its own weight. It is sliced thin, it keeps for days, and it tastes better on the second day than on the first.

Yield: 12 servings. Prep: 1 hour. Rest: 2 hours. Bake: 40 minutes. Rest after baking: 12 hours. Difficulty: advanced. Course: dolce. Region: Sicily, from Palermo and the western provinces.

The Story

The name comes from the Latin buccellatum, the ring shaped bread issued to Roman soldiers, and the shape survived in Sicily long after the bread became a sweet. By the seventeenth century the convent kitchens of Palermo were making it the way it is made now, with a butter and sugar pastry wrapped around whatever the island dried and preserved in autumn. Sicily produced figs in enormous quantity, spread them on cane mats to dry in the September sun, and stored them for the winter. Buccellato is what that store looked like when it reached a festive table. The ring itself was never arbitrary either. A closed circle bakes evenly, it travels without a cut end that dries out, and it reads on a table as a crown, which is why the shape outlived the garrison bread that gave it its name.

Every family and every town has its own hand. In Palermo the ring is large, generously glazed and studded with candied fruit. In the countryside around Agrigento and Caltanissetta it is smaller and plainer, sometimes made as individual rings called buccellatini so that each child received one. Erice and the Trapani coast add more almond, because the almond groves are there. What never changes is the ratio of thin pastry to heavy filling, and the fact that the cake is made in quantity in the days before Christmas and eaten slowly through the season. It was a convent trade as much as a family one. The monasteries of Palermo and Erice sold their sweets through a small grated window to the street, and buccellato was one of the lines that carried a community through Advent.

The filling is a record of who passed through the island. The figs and the almonds are ancient and Mediterranean, the raisins and the cinnamon arrived with the Arabs, who also built the sugar and citrus culture that gives the cake its candied orange, and the chocolate came in from the Spanish crown through Modica in the sixteenth century. Marsala, when it appears, is the nineteenth century addition of the English merchants of the west coast. None of it was put there to be exotic. Every element was simply what a Sicilian pantry held in December, which is the only reason a dessert lasts four hundred years.

Ingredients

For the pastry

All purpose flour, 3 cups (360 g)
Granulated sugar, 1/2 cup (100 g)
Cold unsalted butter, cubed, 7 oz (200 g)
Whole eggs, 2
Baking powder, 1 tsp (4 g)
Fine sea salt, 1/4 tsp (1.5 g)
Finely grated lemon zest, from 1 lemon
Cold whole milk, 2 tbsp (30 ml), as needed

For the fig and nut filling

Dried figs, stems removed, 14 oz (400 g)
Raisins, 3 1/2 oz (100 g)
Blanched almonds, toasted, 3 oz (85 g)
Shelled walnuts, toasted, 2 1/2 oz (70 g)
Dark chocolate, 70 percent, chopped, 2 oz (55 g)
Orange marmalade, 1/4 cup (75 g)
Honey, 2 tbsp (40 g)
Ground cinnamon, 1/2 tsp (1.5 g)
Ground cloves, 1 small pinch
Finely grated orange zest, from 1 orange
Marsala, 2 tbsp (30 ml)

For the egg wash and finishing

Egg yolk, 1, beaten with 1 tbsp (15 ml) whole milk
Apricot jam, 2 tbsp (40 g), warmed and sieved
Shelled pistachios, chopped, 1 tbsp (10 g)
Candied orange peel, chopped, 1 tbsp (12 g)

Preparation

Step 1

Rehydrate the fruit. Put the dried figs and the raisins in a bowl, cover them with very hot water and leave them for 10 minutes, no longer. Drain them into a sieve, press them gently against the mesh and then spread them on a clean towel to dry. The fruit must be soft all the way through and dry on the surface. Water carried into the filling turns to steam and splits the ring open.

Step 2

Build the filling. Put the figs and raisins in a food processor and pulse until they become a homogeneous paste with no piece larger than a lentil. Scrape it into a bowl. Chop the toasted almonds and walnuts by hand, coarsely but evenly, and fold them in with the chocolate, the marmalade, the honey, the cinnamon, the cloves, the orange zest and the Marsala. The paste should hold a shape when pressed.

Step 3

Make the pastry. Whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and lemon zest together. Rub in the cold butter with your fingertips until the mixture looks like coarse sand, then add the eggs and bring it together quickly, adding the cold milk a teaspoon at a time only if it refuses to come. Stop as soon as it forms a mass. Flatten it into a disc, wrap it and refrigerate it for 2 hours.

Step 4

Roll and fill. On a lightly floured surface roll the dough into a rectangle about 16 by 10 inches (40 by 25 cm) and 1/8 inch (3 mm) thick. Shape the filling into a long even cylinder with your hands, the thickness of a thumb, and lay it along one long edge, leaving a clear border of about 1 inch (2.5 cm) at every side.

Step 5

Close the cylinder. Fold the border over the filling, then roll the pastry forward once so the seam sits underneath, and press the seam closed along its whole length. Pinch the two ends shut. Roll the log gently under flat palms to even its diameter. Any gap left here is where the filling escapes and burns on the tray.

Step 6

Form the ring and cut the vents. Lift the log onto a parchment lined sheet, curve it into a circle and join the ends by overlapping them slightly and pressing. With small scissors held almost flat, make shallow cuts around the outer edge at intervals of about 1 inch (2.5 cm), and add a few short cuts across the top. Refrigerate the formed ring for 20 minutes.

Step 7

Bake. Heat the oven to 350°F (175°C) with a rack in the lower third. Brush the chilled ring with the egg wash, avoiding the cuts, and bake for 35 to 45 minutes. It is ready when the pastry is deep gold, the base is firm and dry when lifted with a spatula, and the filling visible in the vents looks glossy rather than wet.

Step 8

Glaze and rest. Slide the ring, still on its parchment, onto a rack and let it cool completely. Only then brush it very lightly with the warmed sieved apricot jam and scatter the pistachios and the candied orange over the top, sparingly. Wrap it loosely in parchment and leave it at cool room temperature overnight before slicing.

Plating

Serve buccellato at room temperature, never chilled and never warm. Cold butter pastry tastes dull and the fig paste goes stiff, while a warm slice falls apart because the filling is still soft enough to slump away from the crust. Take the ring out of its wrapping an hour before service if it has been kept somewhere cool.

Cut it with a long serrated knife in a sawing motion, not by pressing down, and aim for slices about 1/2 inch (1.5 cm) thick so each one shows the full spiral of pastry and filling in cross section. Wipe the blade between cuts or the paste drags. Present the ring whole on a wooden board and slice it at the table, because the crown is the point of the dessert and it disappears once the cake is portioned in the kitchen. A small glass of dessert wine and an espresso are the only accompaniments it wants.

Professional Technique

The technical problem of buccellato is that a dry filling has to be sealed inside a short pastry that then has to bend into a closed circle, and those two demands pull against each other. The first answer is the fig paste. The figs are not chopped, they are worked until nothing in them is bigger than a lentil, because a sheet of pastry 3 mm thick is thinner than a whole dried fig and a coarse piece acts as a wedge from the inside. On the straight log it may hold. On the curve, where the outer wall is stretched and the inner compressed, that piece punches through and the ring leaks before it reaches the oven.

The second is the pastry, which has to be more elastic than a standard frolla. The butter is rubbed in cold to a coarse sand stage rather than creamed, the flour is not worked long enough to build much gluten, and the dough rests a full 2 hours. Cold fat keeps the sheet firm enough to lift, short mixing keeps it from tearing at the bend, and the long rest hydrates the flour evenly so the dough stretches around the curve instead of cracking along it. A dough used after twenty minutes splits every time.

The third is the cuts, which everyone reads as decoration and which are in fact vents. The filling is still roughly a quarter water by weight after draining, and at 350°F (175°C) that water becomes steam with nowhere to go. It lifts the pastry off the paste and bursts out at the join. Shallow cuts made with scissors held almost flat, an inch apart around the outer edge, give the steam a controlled exit, which is why the traditional pattern sits on the outside of the curve.

Texture and Moisture Control

Buccellato is a contest between a crust that wants to stay crisp and a filling that wants to give up its moisture. The soak sets the starting point. Ten minutes in hot water makes a dried fig pliable without waterlogging it, and the towel drying removes the surface water that would otherwise steam the pastry from within. Fruit soaked for an hour cannot be saved by draining, because the water is inside the cells.

In the oven the lower rack matters more than it looks. The base carries the whole weight of the paste and has to set before the top colours, so heat from below is what you want. Bake too high and the surface is deep brown while the bottom is pale and damp, and that ring collapses when it is lifted.

After baking the moisture redistributes, which is why the overnight rest is not optional. Straight from the oven the crust is brittle and the filling soft, so a slice crumbles at one end and slumps at the other. Over twelve hours under loose parchment the filling gives a little moisture back, the crust softens to a short tender bite and the paste firms to something that cuts clean. Wrap it tightly instead and the crust turns leathery and never recovers.

Professional Mise en Place

This is a make ahead dessert in every sense, and a kitchen that produces it at Christmas builds it over two days rather than one.

Equipment and tools

Food processor for the fig paste
Long rolling pin and a bench scraper
Small sharp scissors for the vents, and a pastry brush
Heavy flat sheet pan and parchment, plus a cooling rack
Long serrated knife for service

Prepared ahead

Filling, up to 3 days ahead, refrigerated in a sealed container and brought to room temperature before use
Pastry, up to 2 days ahead, wrapped and refrigerated
Nuts toasted and cooled, up to 1 week ahead, kept airtight
Ring formed, vented and refrigerated, up to 12 hours before baking

Service setup

Ring baked the day before and rested overnight in loose parchment
Apricot glaze warmed and sieved only when the ring is completely cool
Board, serrated knife and a damp cloth to wipe the blade between slices
Dessert wine at 50°F (10°C), poured in small glasses

Chef Tips

Taste the figs before you buy a bag. Sicilian dottato figs are pale, soft and honeyed, and they carry the whole filling. A hard dark fig will not soften in ten minutes and brings a tannic bitterness that no amount of honey covers.

Chop the nuts by hand after toasting, never in the processor with the fruit. Smooth paste and recognisable nuts are two separate jobs, and machining them together gives an even brown filling with no texture in the slice.

Weigh the filling and the pastry once and write the numbers down. The ratio is the recipe: roughly equal weights give a slice with a thin frame and a generous centre, and you can then build any size of ring without guessing.

Make two rings while the oven is on. Buccellato keeps the better part of a week and improves for the first three days, so the second one costs almost nothing in labour.

Common Mistakes

Soaking the fruit too long. An hour in water instead of ten puts moisture inside the fig cells where draining cannot reach it, and the filling then steams the pastry from within until the seam opens.

Leaving the filling coarse. Large fragments of fig behave like wedges on the curve and push through a 3 mm sheet. Pulse the fruit to an even paste and keep the visible texture in the nuts.

Rolling the pastry too thick. A sheet at 5 or 6 mm never bakes through under a heavy filling and gives a slice that is mostly dough. Roll to 1/8 inch (3 mm).

Skipping the surface cuts. Without vents the steam lifts the pastry off the paste and bursts out at the join, and a split ring cannot be closed again in the oven.

Glazing while the ring is warm. Warm jam on warm pastry soaks in instead of setting, leaving a sticky patch rather than a thin shine. Cool the ring completely, then brush sparingly.

Cutting it the same day. A buccellato cut two hours out of the oven crumbles at the crust and slumps in the middle. The overnight rest is what makes a clean slice.

Wine Pairing

Malvasia delle Lipari DOC: The closest match on the island and the one to pour first. The grapes dry on mats on the Aeolian islands, which gives baked fig, dried apricot and orange peel aromas that are this filling in liquid form. The sweetness stays moderate and is framed by real acidity, so it lifts the butter pastry instead of coating the palate.

Marsala DOC: The bottle already in the filling, which makes serving it the obvious move. A Superiore Dolce brings oxidative walnut, caramel and dried date notes that meet the toasted nuts directly, while the fortified alcohol cuts the butter. Pour it cool, in a small glass.

Moscato di Noto DOC: A lighter, more floral partner from the south east of the island, all orange blossom, sage and white peach. Where the dried grape wines echo the filling, this one contrasts with it, and that freshness is welcome after two or three slices.

Moscato di Siracusa DOC: Fuller and more candied than its Noto neighbour, with a marked bitter orange edge on the finish. That bitterness is the useful part: it runs alongside the candied peel and the dark chocolate rather than competing with the sugar in the paste.

Vin Santo del Chianti Classico DOC: The mainland alternative, and a considered one rather than a compromise. Long oxidative ageing in small barrels gives walnut, dried fig and toasted almond aromas that track the filling almost ingredient by ingredient, and the acidity handles a butter pastry. Serve at 54°F (12°C).

Storage & Reheating

Buccellato is built to keep. Once cool and glazed, wrap the ring loosely in parchment and then in a cloth, or hold it in a tin that is not airtight, at cool room temperature for 4 to 5 days. It is best on days two and three. Do not refrigerate it: the cold hardens the butter and dries the fig paste, and the crust never comes back.

It freezes for up to 2 months, whole or in slices, wrapped in parchment and then foil, and it should be glazed after thawing rather than before. Thaw it in its wrapping at room temperature for about 4 hours, never in the refrigerator, where condensation forms on the pastry.

To bring back a ring that has gone soft, give it 6 to 8 minutes at 300°F (150°C), unwrapped on a rack, then cool it fully before slicing. Never use a microwave.

Nutrition

Per serving, based on 12 slices from one ring:

Calories: 425 kcal
Total Fat: 20 g
Saturated Fat: 9 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 10 g
Cholesterol: 60 mg
Sodium: 130 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 57 g
Fiber: 5 g
Total Sugars: 36 g
Added Sugars: 14 g
Protein: 6 g
Lactose: 0.3 g
Principal micronutrients: potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, vitamin E, copper, manganese