Cucidati

Another traditional Maria Christmas cookie. Yummy.

Liza found a dough recipe online. The filling is Maria-specific.

Stuff
Dough:

• 8 cups flour
• 1 1/3 cups sugar
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoon salt
• 4 sticks butter, cold, chopped into cubes
• 8 eggs, beaten

Filling

• 2 cups roasted almonds, whole
• 2 packages figs (need to look up size)
• 1 ten oz package of pitted dates
• 1/2 lb fruit cake mix (this is the tub of sugary dried orange/lemon peels, cherries, pine apple, etc)
• 1.5 cups raisins
• 8 oz semi-sweet or bitter sweet chocolate.
• 1.5 cups espresso

Method

Dough

1. Combine dry ingredients in a big bowl.
2. Add butter cubes to flour and cut in with a pastry cutter until butter is about pea sized.
3. Mix in beaten eggs to combine. Gently knead into a dough, add a bit of cold milk if needed.
4. Refrigerate dough for an hour or so.

Filling

1. Chop stem out of figs, chop fig into 2 or 3 chunks. Put figs into sauce pan and just cover with water. Simmer for about 20 minutes, until figs offer no resistance to being poked with a knife. Drain water.
2. When figs are cool, chop them up in a food processor until pasty. Put them in a large sauce pan.
3. Chop almonds in food processor until ground to lumpy pea-sized bits. Don't go crazy and make a powder/flour thing, you want the texture. Pour the almonds into the sauce pan with the fig gunk.
4. Chop dates in food processor until nearly pureed. Put the date gunk into your sauce pan.
5. Chop the raisins and fruit cake mix in the food processor. You may need to add a touch of water to get the fruit cake mix to break down a bit. Dump it in the sauce pan.
6. Chop up the chocolate with a knife and toss it in the sauce pan.
7. Pour the espresso into the mixture and mix it all up.

Assembly/cooking

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Roll out a bit of dough into a thin strip about 3-4 inches wide and a foot or so long.
3. Put a line of filling down the center of the rolled out dough - lenghtwise. Roll the dough around the filling.
4. Cut the roll into little cookes, then make a slice half-way lenght wise in the cookie. See picture:

5. Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden.
6. Cool. Ice (you can use the same icing recipe from here, but omit the anise). Sprinkle with bling.