Tuscan Befanini – Italian Cuisine – Italian Cuisine


"The Befana comes at night, with all her shoes broken …" and as she loves local traditions, instead of chocolates she brings biscuits to good children in Tuscany: find out how they are prepared

Country you go, gastronomic tradition you find. In a country like Italy this is a dogma, and even more so during the holiday season. If the recipes and Christmas customs are now well known and shared even outside the regional borders, not everyone knows that even for theEpiphany there are real ones gourmet goodies. Never heard of befanini biscuits, typical of some areas of the Tuscany, for example?

befanini

The Befanini recipe according to the Ciocco Tenuta e Parco

To prepare these typical biscuits at home you will need 1 kg of flour, 700 g of sugar, 250 g of butter at room temperature, 6 yolks and 4 and a half egg whites, a sachet of yeast and orange and lemon zest. The befanini are then stuffed with del Marzipan, prepared with 300 g of toasted and chopped almonds, 280 g of sugar, other orange and lemon zest, alchermes, rum, cognac and pebble.

The process

First of all prepare the pastry: simply work the ingredients together until you get a smooth and homogeneous dough, to rest in the fridge for at least half a day.
After this time, prepare a somewhat consistent marzipan kneading the necessary ingredients.
Roll out the pastry with a rolling pin and cut out the biscuits of various shapes, place a teaspoon of marzipan in the center of each biscuit and close the outer edges by pinching the pastaideally with metal tweezers. Decorate with flowers, leaves or other ornaments and let it rest for about a day, before baking the biscuits at 200 degrees until they are golden brown. Sprinkle the powdered sugar befanini on the oven and let it cool.

History and tradition of Epiphany biscuits

Like any self-respecting typical recipe, even that of the Befanini, in reality, lends itself to different variations and interpretations. For example, marzipan is often replaced with colored sugars.
Typical of the Serchio Valley, an area of ​​Tuscany, between the Apuan Alps and the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, which extends from the plain of Lucca to the Garfagnana, the Befanini they prepare between 5 and 6 January. In this area, the feast of Epiphany is so deeply felt and rooted that in 1897 Giovanni Pascoli, poet from the area, dedicated one Befana poem.

Photo credits: BIRIA – press office

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