You have heard of the traditional dessert Nuns Tits and would you like to try cooking it at home? We turned to the Maestro from Brescia Iginio Massari for the recipe – foolproof and fantastic, of course.

The most famous Italian pastry chef in the world and a recurring nightmare for the competitors of MasterChef of each edition, Iginio Massari he is undoubtedly an excellence and an authority on Italian cuisine. This is why his recipes are also among the most replicated, not only on TV. Reached by phone, the teacher explained to us that of Nuns Tits, a dessert with a curious name and origins that are still not very certain. Before discovering the recipe for the dessert suggested by the master, let’s delve into the origins of the name.

Nuns’ boobs: why are they called that?

Also known as Apulian sighs or Three mountains (in Abruzzo), the Tette delle Nuns have a history that is still unclear, but certainly curious and at times compelling. Among the hypotheses there is one that assigns the origin of the dessert to Altamura, in the Bari area (known to most for the production of bread). The name is given by the shape that closely resembles a woman’s breast. But what do nuns have to do with it? Again according to tradition, the dessert seems to have often been prepared by the nuns of the monastery of Santa Chiara in Altamura. Then reading the volume Le Sise de Mòneche by professor Mario Palmerio, the denomination sees three explanatory hypotheses: the first is that according to which the original diction would be three mountains, in reference to the actual mountainousness of the Italian districts. The story goes that the poet Modesto della Porta, observing the whiter-than-usual pastries, exclaimed: «Madonna, how white and straight and pointed they are, they seem like “sise de mòneche” to me. A second hypothesis refers to another story, that of a nun who, to camouflage the shape of her body, added fabric between her two breasts in order to flatten them. Hence the secular fantasy about the existence of three breasts. For the third and final hypothesis, the most “hasty”, the “sise delle nuns” are so called because they are a dessert invented by the nuns.

But let’s see how the Tette delle Monache are prepared following the recipe of the master Iginio Massari, a somewhat narrative recipe as we reached him on the phone, after one of his work commitments – between one panettone and another, but this time not on a cruise! The maestro proved to be very helpful and, despite his tough presence on TV, also quite witty.

The recipe for Iginio Massari’s Tette delle Monache

Ingredients

• 100 g egg white
• 100 g egg yolks
• 100 g sugar
• 50 g flour
• 50 g starch
• 1 vanilla pod

For the custard

Iginio Massari advises: «For the custard, do it as you are used to making it. We put the recipe for ours below.

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Go to the recipe

Method

1. Start whipping the egg whites, which have a structuring function.
2. Then the egg yolks, with their emollient function, with the sugar.
3. Add the vanilla.
4. Then sift the two flours and combine the two mixtures using a spatula and moving it from top to bottom.
5. Make small hemispheres and place them on a baking tray with a piping bag using the smooth nozzle no. 10.
6. Bake at 200° and wait until the “tits” are uniformly golden; usually, but it depends on the oven, they will be ready after 8-9 minutes.
7. Once cooled, create a central hole and add the slightly “firm” custard using the piping bag.
8. For the icing, use melted sugar at 38° and icing the “tits”.
9. Finally, add half a candied cherry on top, take it and… eat it!

Time of realization? Massari replies: «It takes me 20 minutes but, if you have never prepared it, consider an hour.