Sicilia

Almond Lenten logs, baked, sliced and baked again — and a correction we owe the reader. We had these at Class A as Sicily’s parallel to the cantuccio. They are not on Sicily’s official PAT register: we read all hundred Sicilian bakery entries and quaresimali appear in Toscana, Liguria, Basilicata, Molise and Puglia, but not here. Sicily registers its Lenten and feast biscuits under other names entirely — cucciddata, ossa di morto, mastazzola, piparelle, nucàtuli. The biscuit is real and baked; the official standing we claimed for it was not.

Sesame-crusted "queen’s biscuits," carrying the sesame of Arab Sicily on every surface. Milk in the morning, marsala after dark.

Fennel-spiced rounds for Saint Martin’s day, the hard version made expressly to drown in moscato di Pantelleria.

The "bones of the dead": sugar-crusted, clove-scented, and nearly inedible dry. Correct after ten seconds in moscato.

Sugar- and cocoa-glazed biscuits of the days of the dead, eaten by the mixed handful from every Palermo tray.

Vino cotto spice biscuits from Erice’s mountain convents, where the recipes stayed put for centuries.