An Italian cookie stuffed with a fig, orange, apple, nut and spice mixture. Like a homemade Fig Newton. This makes a large recipe…it can easily be halved.
Ingredients
- For the dough:
2 cups solid vegetable shortening
3 cups granulated sugar
6 large eggs
8 cups all-purpose flour
7 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
pinch salt
milk
- For the filling:
2 pounds figs
1/2 pound raisins
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 cup granulated sugar
half of an orange (with peel)
half of a small apple
3/4 cups chopped pecans
- For decorations
1 recipe Powdered Sugar Icing (optional)
sprinkles (optional)
Directions
- Make the dough:
- To make dough, cream sugar and shortening: add eggs, vanilla, and salt. Blend in flour and baking powder by hand. Knead dough until smooth and workable. If this seems dry, add one tablespoon of milk at a time until you have a workable consistency.
- Make the filling:
- Cut up figs, orange with its peel, and apple into small pieces, mix well with the raisins, then pass through a food mill or meat grinder (if you don’t have a food mill, use a food processor in small batches). Mix in the cinnamon and chopped nuts by hand.
- Assemble and bake:
- Preheat oven to 375 F (190 C). On a floured board or between two sheets of waxed paper, roll out portions of dough a little more than 1/8 inch thickness. Top with a line of fig mixture. Wrap dough over mixture, sealing figs inside dough, to make a long flat tube of uniform width and uniform thickness. Slice this log into the desired cookie size. Bake on ungreased cookie sheet for 10-15 minutes or until golden. Remove to wire racks to cool completely. If desired, when cool, prepare Powdered Sugar Icing, ice the cookies and top with sprinkles
Notes
- Also sometimes referred to as Buccellati (although this word is also used for a larger fig-stuffed pastry), Turtigliuna (the same word is also sometimes used for a type of pasta) or Sicilian Fig Cookies. Common misspellings: cucidati, cuccidatti, cucidatti.