Pittsburg Youth Development Center was the place to be last Saturday afternoon. About 200 people arrived to taste and buy their favorite Sicilian cookies at a special holiday event hosted by the Sons & Daughters of Italy, C. Colombo Lodge 1315.
Contra Costa County resident Mary Lucido brought in 200 of her famous tetù cookies, which sold out rather quickly. Others carried in pizzelle, coconut cookies, almond cookies, esse biscotti, rainbow cookies, and thumbprint cookies. Someone even brought chocolate chip cookies.
But the true stars of the show were the cuccidati (also spelled cucidati), for which attendees could cast their votes as part of the thirteenth annual Cucidati Contest. Meanwhile, judges, using a blind taste test, rated the chewy, fruity, and sometimes boozy classic Sicilian Christmas cookies on appearance, texture, filling, and dough.
The event serves as an unofficial community kickoff for the holiday season and raises funds for scholarships. Anyone could enter to win one of the multiple prizes as long as they brought at least 100 cuccidati, each at least 2.5 inches long.
Mary encouraged 2013 winner Gina Cardinalli Rines to enter. The one-time manager and head pastry chef at Berry's Pastry Shop (now Mike's) in Antioch, California, sells her own holiday cookies each year. More recently, she served as an assistant manager at Alpine Pastry & Cakes in the nearby city of Concord, where she still pitches in from time to time between her on-campus suspension supervisor position at Freedom High School in Oakley.
Gina has been professionally baking and decorating sweets and cakes for the past 25 years. But her real training came in her Sicilian nonni's kitchen, where she and her grandmother would bake and make sweet memories together.
Like the Aiellos in Beneath the Sicilian Stars, the Cardinalli family came to Pittsburg by way of Isola delle Femmine, Sicily. They didn't make cuccidati, but a friend introduced Gina to the recipe for these distinctly Sicilian cookies, which, through their ingredients, tell the story of the many visitors, conquerors, and monarchs who shaped Italy's largest island and its history.
After years of refining technique and adjusting in response to customer feedback, Gina landed on a formula that last weekend proved to be a winner. She won the Cucidati Contest People's Choice Award and third place in judging. Teresa (Ferrante) Freeman took home first prize.
Gina and I chatted about what makes a winning cookie, her not-so-secret recipe, and why traditions aren't meant to be static.
When and how did you start making cuccidati?
It wasn't one of the big cookies my family made, but my dad's dad's best friend's mother was known for hers. In 2005, she came over and showed me how to make them. And so I've taken her recipe, used my professional experience, and adapted it into my own over the years.
How did you update the recipe?
I've changed some of the ingredients, and then last year, a customer who has been buying my cookies for about 15 years reached out and was like, "Hey, I know this is what you make all the time, but do you think you could kind of tweak it? My husband and I were thinking it would taste better if it had a little more chocolate and a little more orange flavor, and if the crust was a little different."
I went off what they had said, and I told the rest of my customers, my year-round customers, "I'm going to test this out and do it differently," and they said, "No!"
But after everybody tasted it, they thought it was definitely improved. So I've added more chocolate and more orange, and I've changed my crust. It used to be all shortening, but I combined it with butter. I also use whiskey and Grand Marnier now for the orange flavor when soaking the fruit filling.
Are any ingredients more challenging to source?
I use mincemeat in the filling. I used to buy it in bulk, but they stopped carrying it at the store I was going to. I was still at the bakery. Our sales reps would reach out to us in August to ask if we needed mincemeat, because they would only get a certain amount in at a warehouse, so you would have to be put on a list. So, I buy and stock up for the year because I'll go through a lot of jars during all of the holidays.
Which ingredients are key to a good batch of cuccidati?
I would say figs would be the biggest contributor to the flavor. They're pulled from Sicily's Arab ties.
There are also nuts. Because the fruit is dried, you want to rehydrate it with alcohol to enhance the flavor. Some people marinate it for months, but I'll do it for 4 or 5 days to get a good flavor.
Having the outside, the shell, be thin so you can taste all of the filling makes a big difference, too. When it's too thick, it's not as enjoyable because you're tasting the dough rather than the filling.
What does making these cookies mean to you?
It's important to keep traditions like these. I have two daughters, so they help me; they're getting older. They're nine and seven, so they're helping, curious, and want to do it as well.
When we make ravioli, it's almost the same process as when you make cookie dough. You're making a filling, and then you're rolling it out, and it takes up two days.
Making cookies is a long process, but that's part of the experience because they're all done by hand. You cannot make them in a mixer. They do not come out the same, no matter what.
If you put in the time and effort, you'll have that transferred into what you're producing.
A lot of older people appreciate what you're doing, because they used to make them or don't want to make them, because it's too hard.
There aren't many people from my generation (Millennials) participating or showing up. But it is important to preserve the legacy, especially when many people's families came from the same place and share the same traditions we want to keep.
If you don't learn it or put the effort into knowing how, then it's going to get lost.
Looking for more Italian cookie inspiration? Check out these other blog features.
