Addison Embroidery
at the
Vicarage

Attempt at Italian ricciarelli

Recipe taken from: 1001 Cupcakes, Cookies & other tempting treats, ed. Susanna Tee (Parragon Books, 2009) where they are called mistakenly called ‘ricciaretti’, a mistake which I think has evaded the proof reader’s eyes.

Ingredients

125 g /4 1/2 oz blanched almonds

15 g/1/2 oz candied orange peel

15 g/1/2 oz plain flour

60g/2 1/4 caster sugar

4 1/2 teasp. water

100 g/3 1/2 oz icing sugar (plus extra for dusting)

50 g/1 3/4 oz cornflour

1 large egg white

3/4 teasp. baking powder

Place almonds, candied orange peel and flour in a food processor and pulse to form a paste.

Place caster suger and water in a saucepan. Bring to boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 2-3 mins or until reduced to a thick syrup. Remove from heat, add the almond paste and mix together. Transfer to a bowl and leave to cool for about an hour.

Preheat oven to 140 degrees C/120 degrees C for a fan oven/275 degrees F/Gas Mark 1.

Line baking sheet with rice paper (I large or 2 small baking sheets)

Keep back 1 teasp. of icing sugar. Sift remaining icing sugar and cornflour on to a work surface.

Place egg white and reserved icing sugar in a bowl and whisk until stiff. Add the baking powder to the almond paste, then fold in the whisked egg white until combined. Turn the mixture on to the work surface and roll into a log shape about 6 cm/2 1/2 inches thick, then flatten until it is 4 cm/1 1/2 inches thick. Cut into 1 cm/ 1/2 inch slices. Place on the baking sheet and form into diamond shapes.

Bake in preheated oven for about 30 minutes or until risen but still soft in the centre. Leave to cool on the baking tray for 2-3 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Serve dusted with sifting icing sugar.

Italian ricciaretti (from 1001 cupcakes, cookies & other tempting treats. ed Susanna Tee; pub. Parragon Books, 2009)

So many things went wrong with this recipe but the ricciaretti turned out to be delicious.

1. I used ground almonds, not blanched. My almond mixture never turned into a paste.

2.The sugar and water bit never turned into a syrup, but just encrusted the saucepan. A good splurge of Agave nectar seemed to work very well instead.

3.Egg white and icing sugar never got especially stiff. Thick, yes; stiff, no.

4. So the whole rolling out procedure never happened. I just dropped spoonfuls of the somewhat sloppy mixture on to the icing sugar/cornflour work surface and rolled the dollop into a little cushion. (There seemed to be far too much cornflour.)

This recipe was intimidating and I obviously got most things about it wrong. I think next time (what next time?) i won’t cook them for quite so long. They were, however, rather lovely with a crisp outer coat and a nougat-like centre. Interestingly, no one guessed there was orange peel. 

Post script. I have just googled riciaretti (so-called in recipe book) only to find they are ricciarelli. Those  shown in an article in the Independent  look just like mine. Other recipes look easier than the one I tried, so I might have a go again.

Sunday the 10th of March was Mothering Sunday and I meant to write about it at the time but we have been having problems with our broadband connection which meant everything went very slow after 5pm, in fact so slow that I could never get beyond putting my password in on Google Chrome. What with being at work and having a day in London, it is only today that I have had the time to put fingers to keyboard to see if all the regigging and fiddling of the home hub at the weekend has been fruitful.

So, Mothering Sunday saw a second attempt at marzipan and almond biscuits. Success. This time I put the fan oven on 170 degrees C  and the biscuits went into the oven with a thumbprint indentation but no marzipan ball. After 5 minutes, I took the biscuits out,  put a marzipan ball on each and returned them to the oven for another 5 minutes. This time the marzipan was still soft and the biscuit was, Goldilocks style, just right. 

Almond and marzipan biscuits: a second attempt

These were appropriate biscuits for Mothering Sunday as the marzipan connection makes the biscuits as near to a simnel cake as a biscuit can be and simnel cake has been a traditional  sweetmeat for Mothering Sunday for centuries  (although many people associate it more with Easter). Mothering Sunday is not to be confused with Mother’s Day, which  Ann Jarvis of Philadelphia, bereft after the death of her own mother, campaigned to be set aside to celebrate mothers. Congress gave approval in 1914 and President Woodrow Wilson settled on the second Sunday in May.

In the UK, Mothering Sunday is the fourth Sunday in Lent which has its roots in a day of dedication when people of the parish went to their mother church or to the Cathedral. Families got into the habit of going together and a tradition was established. This getting together became especially important as young women left home for work, which was often in service in the city or in a big local house. Young men left to apprenticeships. Time off was granted for Mothering Sunday, which along with Boxing Day, might have been the only fixed holiday in the year. The girls would often bake a simnel cake to take home for their mothers. This day was also known as Refreshment Sunday because of the practice of relaxing the Lenten fast at this time to commemorate the feeding of the five thousand and how could one better celebrate a break in fasting than baking a cake?

Mothering Sunday’s sermon does not have to be too full of sweetness and sugar. A mother’s love for her children, like Jesus’s love, must on occasion be tough love.  Sometimes we too have to say, “Get up and walk”.

Patchwork cushion

Here is a small patchwork cushion I made a few years ago and which I show here purely to give a bit of colour to the page. It breaks all the rules of patchwork as there are several different weights of fabric, ranging from linen to lawn, but sometimes you just feel like breaking the odd rule or two – thank goodness it’s confined to patchwork.