Old Italian pastry recipes

I am trying to locate pastry recipes that I grew up with back in the 40's.

1) The Italian rum wedding cake.
2) Partichini pastry
3) Napolitan pastry
All help would be appreciated.

Welcome to Cheftalk. Can you please describe the Partichini pastry?
What does it look like? What are typical ingredients? Country of origin? Or heritage?


Recipes for Italian Rum Cake:

http://www.google.com/search?client=...ppa+Inglese%22

http://www.google.com/search?num=100...gs&btnG=Search

pastiera napoletana
http://www.ischiamarket.com/english/ricettepastiera.htm
http://www.recipelink.com/mf/2/9542

Neapolitan Cake
http://english.incucina.tv/recipes/r...ke/ricetta.asp

More: http://www.google.com/search?client=...UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

I find it hard to describe what was in this pastry.
The time I tasted this pastry was back in the 40"s.
It was baked by Salvatore Piantedosi from Avellino, Italy. He opened his bread and pastry business in 1916 in Everett, Massachusetts. His sons now bake and distribute bread only throughout the U.S. from Malden Mass.
The only one I know who makes this pastry is in a small bakery in Woodlawn, Mass. In fact they make all of the above pastries.
I am now in my 70's and live in Florida where bakeries never heard of the above pastries. In my opinion, this pastry was to die for.
I don,t know if this info will help.

I know where some Italian cooks and chefs hang out: Slow Travel They have a food and cooking forum. One member is a CIA-trained pastry chef who has her own cooking school; she's very personable and may be able to help you. Here is her site. There are many other helpful food enthusiasts with ideas. They're as friendly as we are here.

MEZZALUNA
Thank you for your help. I'll give them a try.

Thanks to all who responded to my questions.

Well, not to show late, but to say I understand what you are after. If not the actual pastries. There are many things of my childhood I enjoyed that have dissapeared with time, and my own mind is a sieve. I can close my eyes and remember a taste or an aroma, but I can not remember a name to save my life :)

Good luck and keep us apprised of how you make out.

New info.

Hi, I'm back.
I just flew in from the North End in Boston and found the pastry I was asking about.
It is called PERUGINI and it's ingredients I'm guessing is as follows:
The top layer is a pastry dough sprinkled with powdered sugar.
Then there is about a 1/4" layer of Italian cream (whatever that is).
The center has some sort of sponge cake between 1" & 1-1/2" thick soaked with boiled run (?)
Then another layer of Italian cream.
Finally a bottom layer of pastry dough.

I don't know if this helps. If it makes sense to you I would appreciate a breakdown of this recipe so I can try to make it myself.
Thanks for all your help,
Dominick

epicurious.com had a great italian food forum, you could find most recipes there, and many of them would appear with differant names, as Italian families and regions make there own names for a favorite recipe.

recipe

MEZZALUNA
MUDBUG
Did the two of you give up on me?

Old Italian Pastry Recipes

Hi, My grandfather came to this country from Sicliy and settled in the North End of Boston. I have fond memories of him coming to my Dad's house on Sundays with these miniture creampuffs, like a Dunkin munchkin filled with cream and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Also a sunday favorite was the Parigini made with soft cake layers with rum and topped with powdered sugar. You can find these at Mikes Pastry in the North End of Boston. The website to go to would be mikespastry.com. You probably have already found information, but I thought I would pass this along since I long for these old favorites too. They are hard to find in South Carolina! Thanks for the memories.

Jade

Hello

Dominick,

I know you wrote your message a WHILE ago...but are you still interested in that recipe for the parigini?

Marzi

Bikki Nuts

So, my grandmother called a pastry bikki nuts.

it was an italian sweet with a short crust, pastry cream, lattus top egg wash and pignoli, dusted with 10x.

Hi Dominick
I grew up in the boston area in the 50s (born in medford, moved to burlington at 4) - actually went to school with piantedosi's daughter - and my parents were born in italy and were brought to the states as children and grew up in the north end and in charlestown. Anyway, i never liked those italian pastries as a kid - too rum-soaked for me! Or too dry. But i remember them pretty well.

your number `1 is probably a genoise soaked in the kind of rum syrup like you'd use for baba' au rhum - it's fairly common here to soak cakes in liquer-flavored syrup. Then a pastry cream in the middle. I remember looking forward to desert when i'd go to people's houses for dinner as a kid and getting this, which i couldn't stand. Here in rome they tend to use the liqueur alchermes instead of rum, which no kid in his right mind likes, and they still insist on putting this syrup on the cakes for birthday parties. Growing up in an italian household where wine was always on the table, and grownups were always trying to get me to taste it ("just put your finger in it" "yuck! it's sour!") i ended up not much liking alcohol at all. It was never considered a problem to offer kids rum cake. But i hated it.

number 2 is probably a misspelling of "pasticcini" (pronounced pah-stee-CHEE-nee) and probably a typo or a misreading of a handwritten s as an r - but all it means is "little pastries" so i don;t know what it would be. Here pasticcini means little cookies, little cream puffs, little tarts. Maybe you can describe what it is you used to have.

number 3 you'd also have to describe - it simply means the pastry they make in naples, and naples makes hundreds of pastries - while caterina de medici brought italian pastry to france, the french elaborated them and brought them to naples, and in naples you have baba' and cream puffs and brioche and other stuff that is clearly french in origin. they even have "catto'" which is a mispronunciation and misspelling of gateau!

someone mentioned cream filled things which are probably zeppole di san giuseppe - at the feast of saint joseph they make what is essentially cream puff batter that is fried rather than baked and fill it with cream and with lots of powdered sugar on top - in march the pastry shops are full of them, and i remember them being sold in the north end too.

The one with the sponge cake and pastry crust and cream is what i believe they call a diplomatico. it's just that, thin puff pastry, a layer of liqueur soaked sponge or genoise, a layer of pastry cream and another layer of pastry with sugar on top

someone mentioned the cake with pastry crust and cream and pinoli - that would probably be what they call "torta della nonna" here in rome, and you can probably find a recipe for it. I can't imagine what bikki nuts would be - bicchi (which would be the italian spelling) doesn;t mean anything as far as i know. it may be an Anglification of something but i can't imagine what.

hope that helps.
Having the correct spelling helps with the google searches, so you might look them up.

Sorry, DOMINICK, I don't have anything further. Did you get any nibbles at Slow Talk? Shannon has published a book about food in Venice; I don't know if that will help. Otherwise, I could only direct you to "Diva", who is a CIA-trained pastry chef from California. You can try her site, www.divinacucina.com. I think she has given up her cooking school, but she'd have some insights for you. Please tell her I said hello! I met her in Florence five years ago.

Marzi

Hi Marzi,
I'm sorry about not responding any sooner, but us old folks tend to get sick easily.
I definitely am interested in this recipe . You made my taste buds drool when I read your reply.
Thank you for responding.

Dominick

Hi Dominick,

Is this what the pasticcini looks like?

Here is a recipe I found :
Adriana's Italian Recipe for Pasticcini

Don't know if that's what you're looking for. Good luck!

"Bikki Nuts"

Siduri said: "I can't imagine what bikki nuts would be - bicchi (which would be the italian spelling) doesn;t mean anything as far as i know. it may be an Anglification of something but i can't imagine what."

My grandmother used to call a similar pastry "Boogie-Naught" This spelling only represents the pronounciation, not the correct spelling. Hope it helps.

still doesn;t sound like anything i know, redvech. It sounds like "buchi" (pronounced boo-key) which means holes, buchino wouild mean small holes, but doesn;t make sense and doesn;t have a final t.
I'm no expert on this, just that i speak italian, but there are so many dialects, now i'm really curious.
The pastry case, pastry cream, lattice top and pinoli is "torta della nonna" (grandma's cake) in rome. but i think i said that.

Just got an inspiration. I remember my grandmother and mother used to make pies with pasta frolla and either ricotta, or a sort of rice pudding baked in, and made a decoration with nthe dough around the edge, which if i had a pen here, i could draw, - you make a diagonal cut in the extra dough, fold it over, so you get a triangular point sticking out from the pie, do it all around and then with your hands, bend them in so they go over the pie, making a border of triangles. This was called "i becchi" - the beaks.
becchi is pronounced "bek-kee"- small ones would be called becchini (though that also means gravedigger).
couldthis be what you're talking about?

Crostatta ricotta -- with pasta frolla i becchi. I do that!

BDL

"Bikki/Boogie Nuts/Naughts"

Siduri -
Mandarin.mint posted a picture closer to what I remember. it did not have a lattice top, and had a pudding-like filling.

yes, torta della nonna has pudding filling, not ricotta, and the pine nuts on top, though generally no lattice. The becchi, as bdl says, are usually on ricotta pie, or rice pie as i know it, but piantedosi might habve been making something from a particular region or even town in italy.

Interesting, I just returned from living in Perugia for several months and the people there are "i Perugini". I don't recognize that pastry at all, though.