Bake Some Memories
Italian Fig Cookie Recipe
Many years ago my aunt and uncle shared their recipe for Italian Fig Cookies (Cuccidata) with me.
Her cookie dough recipe with its time-tested measurements and instructions ensured perfect results every time. His fig filling recipe caused me difficulty year after year.
Truth be told, I’m a decent baker. But for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why my cookies didn’t equal theirs. Mine tasted okay but missed that something special thing that made theirs sooo good.
Every year, a week before Christmas I’d call my uncle to whine about the latest filling failure. It was either too runny, or thick, the flavor was off…something.
He took great pleasure mocking my baking abilities – did I follow the recipe correctly? Measure right? Not rough handle the dough? My answers were ‘yes’ to all and then he’d tell me I’d done something “stupid”.
We’d review the recipe again. While I scribbled notes he’d brag about the twenty batches already baked, decorated and wrapped for gifts. I couldn’t match his production.
On or about year fifteen my uncle and I came to an impasse over these cookies. We agreed I’d bring my ingredients to his house and work out my problems together once and for all.
The first thing I learned: this competition of ours was rigged. He cheated.
My uncle used fresh figs from a tree he nursed in his yard (for the record, figs are not native to New England). The tree, originally shipped from Italy, grew in a large plastic barrel in the corner of his impressive vegetable garden. Come fall, he harvested and dried the figs, I swear, to taunt our cookie bake-off. Then he wrapped his baby in layers of burlap and moved it to the garage where it received his tender administration until spring.
Fresh figs.
Hands down, no comparison to my figs. Dried, cryovaced and shipped 5,000 miles from Messina to Stop & Shop.
While my Cuisinart produced a slurry mess, the old contraption he used ground the figs, dates and raisins into a glorious chunky texture. Perfection.
As I worked the grinder’s hand crank, Italian music played on the Hi-Fi fighting against the timbre of my uncle’s directives. His normal speaking tone was at least thirty decibels higher than mine on my best screaming day. No matter how many times I insisted his yelling didn’t make me understand the recipe better, he insisted, louder, it did.
We measured, mixed and baked cookies. Wine got poured, then coffee while we enjoyed the sweet confections of our labor.
My uncle remembered his mother and aunt making these same cookies in the “old country”. His version couldn’t compare to theirs, he said. The memory of his departed family softened his face, but did nothing to quiet his voice.
I left his kitchen with a ginormous tray of the best cookies I’d ever made.
Maybe it was the fresh figs. Or the old-fashioned grinder. More likely it was the channeled love that made his cookies so delicious.
Today I took out the recipe which is now immortalized in a fundraiser cookbook. It’s not his recipe, of course, but the one he and I worked out together. To me it’s perfect.
As I channel my aunt and uncle I’m both happy and sad. Happy for the memories of our years baking together, and sad, missing the friendly banter between batches.
I put on Christmas music, pour a glass of wine and tear up with joy. These cookies taste stupid good.
Be F-G AWESOME TODAY!