In short. Apulian sweets run on almonds, honey, fig syrup and fried dough, and most of them belong to a date on the calendar: cartellate at Christmas, scarcella at Easter, zeppole for St Joseph’s day.
There is very little butter in Apulian baking and not much cream. What there is instead is almonds — the region has always had them — and vincotto, the dark syrup made by reducing figs or grape must.
Almonds, and why they are everywhere
Puglia is one of the great almond regions of the Mediterranean, and the trees are part of the landscape between the Murgia and the Salento. Before industrial sugar was cheap, a sweet made from ground almonds and honey was the only sweet most people ever ate — and the recipes that survive still work on that base.
It also explains a texture that surprises visitors: Apulian sweets are frequently hard. Castagnelle snap. Taralli dolci are dry. They were made to keep in a tin for weeks, not to be eaten warm from a pastry shop.
The calendar
- December — cartellate, made in quantity in the days before Christmas, as a family job
- 13 December — the eyes of Saint Lucy
- 19 March — zeppole for Saint Joseph, and the bakeries sell nothing else
- Easter — the scarcella, shaped as a sheep, a dove or a ring
Out of season you will not find them. A bakery in July does not sell cartellate, and asking gets you a look. It is not commercial calculation: these are feast foods, and the feast is the point. If you want them, come when they are made.
Sweets with a date attached
Almost every Apulian sweet is tied to a feast, and they appear and disappear with it. Cartellate are made in the days before Christmas, in quantity, as a family job. The scarcella belongs to Easter. Zeppole are for 19 March. Outside their season you will not find them in a bakery, and that is not commercial calculation — it is simply how it has always been.
The recipes
Cartellate — ribbons of wine-and-oil dough wound into rosettes, fried and drowned in fig syrup. The Christmas sweet of Puglia.
Castagnelle — hard almond biscuits with clove and cinnamon, dipped in dark chocolate.
And the rest of the collection, all of it online:
- Bocconotti — little filled pastry cases
- Scarcella — the Easter sweet, with an egg baked into it
- Zeppole of Saint Joseph — choux pastry and custard, for 19 March
- Fig syrup — the vincotto that dresses the cartellate
- Almond sweets — what Puglia does with the almond harvest
- Pastatelle and eyes of Saint Lucy — the two that belong to a date on the calendar
- Short-crust pastry and icing — the two bases half of these recipes start from
The whole collection is on the Apulian recipes page.
