Recipe
Tiliccas
Hand-cut shortbreads filled with sapa (grape must syrup), almonds and semolina: a festive sweet that demands patience for the braided closure but rewards with a bite never the same, crumbly and dark.
Ingredients
Serves: 30
- Type 00 flour for the pastry 500 g
- Lard 100 g
- Sugar 80 g
- Whole eggs 2
- Lemon and orange zest 1 di ciascuno
- Sapa (cooked grape must) 300 ml
- Toasted chopped almonds 150 g
- Chopped walnuts 100 g
- Fine semolina 80 g
- Ground cinnamon and cloves un pizzico
Method
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Make the filling: warm the sapa on low heat, add the semolina in a rain, whisking to avoid lumps. Cook 5 minutes until it thickens.
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Off the heat, add almonds, walnuts, cinnamon and cloves. Cool completely: the filling should be dense and shapeable.
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For the pastry: knead flour, lard, sugar, eggs and citrus zest into a smooth, elastic dough. Cover and rest 30 minutes.
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Roll the dough thin (2-3 mm) and cut 5 cm strips.
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Lay a cord of filling down the centre of each strip. Fold the pastry edges over the filling and seal with fingers, forming a long sausage.
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Bend the sausage into an arc, S shape or ring. With a fluted cutter make diagonal cuts along the upper edge — this is the hallmark of tilicca: the "braided" decoration.
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Lay on a lined tray and bake at 170°C for 22-25 minutes: the surface should stay pale, not brown. Too much heat hardens the pastry.
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While still warm, brush each tilicca with a drizzle of sapa: it glosses and sets the colour. Keep in a tin: they soften over the first days.