If anyone gets this I will be shocked...?

Question

My mom was Sicilian and used to make a cookie for Christmas that was filled dates, figs and nuts ground up and folded into cookie dough. She called them something like cootchiedotties.....but in Italy there is a lot of slang. Does anyone know the real name?

Answer 1

Is this it? (Also known as Sicilian Cucidati)

"Cosi di Ficu - - Traditional Sicilian Christmas Cookies with Figs

INGREDIENTS:

* 1 k (2 1/4 pounds, 2 pound bags + 1 cup) the best flour
* 1 pound 10 ounces (650 g) dried figs
* 1 3/4 cups (350 g) sugar
* 11 ounces (375 g) rendered lard
* 1/4 pound (100 g) raisins
* 1/4 pound (100 g) blanched toasted almonds
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or 1 packet vanillin
* Some bitter chocolate
* The zest of a lemon
* The zest of an orange
* The zest of a tangerine (the fruit should be organically grown)
* 1/2 cup espresso coffee
* 1 teaspoon honey
* A handful of diavulicchi (colored bits of sugar)

PREPARATION:
"Begin by preparing the filling: grind the figs, citrus zest and almonds together, then put them in a bowl and add to them the raisins, chocolate (he doesn't say how much; go by eye), coffee, and honey. Mix well and let rest, covered.

Soften the lard by kneading a little hot water into it and combine it with the flour to obtain a dough, working in the sugar and vanilla too. Roll out the dough and cut it into pieces large enough to be folded over balls of filling (he suggests doing recognizable shapes, for example donkeys, barrels, dogs, dolls, baskets, etc). Once the filling is in the dough, take a sharp knife and trace zigzag geometric patterns in the dough, so that when the cookies bake the dough will pull back, revelaing the filling below.

As soon as they are done, brush them with lightly beaten egg yolk and sprinkle them with diavulicchi. To heighten the chromatic effect.

Mr. Correnti doesn't say anything about baking time or temperature (this sort of omission is much more common than you might think in Italian recipes). I'd figure a baking temperature of 360 F (180 C) and bake them until light golden."

Another recipe, with better instructions, here:

http://www.italiansrus.com/recipes/cucidati.htm

Answer 2

Grandma's Italian Fig Cookies Cuccidahti

This makes about 50 dozen cookies, so plan on giving a lot out and/or cutting the ingredients in half!

Ingredients for Filling:
5 lbs figs
5 1/2 cups (approx) raisins
2 lbs nuts (I usually use pecans)
2 lbs pitted dates
1/2 tsp ground clove
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp orange extract
1/2 tsp grated orange peel
1/2 tsp alspice
1 cup simple syrup (and add extra a dash of brandy or whiskey if you want -- my Gramma often used whiskey)

Ingredients for Dough:
1 pound unsalted butter (original recipe used lard)
1 pound sugar
6 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla
3 pounds flour
7 tsp baking powder
large pinch of salt
1 cup milk


To prepare filling: Grind figs, raisins, dates, and nuts. Add next 5 ingredients to the ground mixture. Mix the simple syrup to the ground mixture until the mixture is thoroughly wett. (Texture should be very tacky.)

To prepare dough: Cream butter. Add sugar, eggs, and vanilla; beat until creamy. Mix in a large pan the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the creamed mixture and knead will; slowly add milk during the kneading process.

Assemble the cookie.

Place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes in a 375F oven.



Here's a few more to try . . .

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Sicilian-Fig-Cookies/Detail.aspx

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Italian-Fig-Cookies-I/Detail.aspx

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Italian-Fig-Cookies-II/Detail.aspx

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_25219,00.html

Answer 3

This is what you are looking for.
The name of these filled pastries is Cucidati, which is Sicilian for Buccellati, or "little bracelets

Cucidati

FILLING
2 cup Dried figs
1/4 cup Yellow raisins
1/4 cup Currants or dark raisins
1/4 cup Candied orange peel
1/4 cup Toasted, sliced almonds
1/4 cup Toasted pine nuts
2 oz Bittersweet chocolate chopped
1/3 cup Apricot preserves
1/4 cup Dark rum
1 tsp Instant espresso coffee
1/2 tsp Cinnamon
1/4 tsp Ground cloves

DOUGH-----
3 1/3 cup Flour
1 cup Sugar
1 tsp Baking powder
12 tbl Lard or butter
2 x Eggs
1/3 cup Milk
MM
1 x MM M
EGG WASH FOR
ASSEMBLING
1 x Egg
1 pch Salt
Confectioners' sugar

FOR THE FILLING: Stem the figs and quarter them. Place in a bowl and cover with boiling water; steep 10 minutes. Drain and chop coarsely in the food processor. Combine with remaining ingredients. To prepare in advance, cover tightly with plastic wrap and keep at a cool room temperature or in the refrigerator up to 3 days.
FOR THE DOUGH: Combine the flour, sugar and baking powder in a bowl and stir to mix. Rub in the lard or butter finely, leaving the mixture powdery. Beat the eggs and milk to combine in a small bowl and stir into the flour mixture to form a dough. Turn the dough out on a lightly floured surface and knead lightly a few times. Wrap the dough in plastic and chill. Divide the dough into 12 pieces and roll each into a cylinder about 12 inches long. Flour the surface and the dough lightly and roll it into a rectangle about 14 inches long and 3 inches wide. Place a line of the filling down the center of each rectangle, using 1/12 of the filling for each piece of dough. Bring up the dough around the filling and pinch to seal. Turn the filled sausage of dough over so that the seam is on the bottom and cut it into 3 1/2- to 4-inch lengths. Using a sharp paring knife or single-edge razor blade, make a series of diagonal slashes in the top of each little sausage. Pull and twist gently, holding the sausage at each end to open the slashes. Transfer the Cucidati as they are formed to paper- lined cookie sheets, curving them into wide horseshoe shapes. Make an egg wash by beating the egg and salt together with a fork until it is loose. Paint each shape with the egg wash. Bake the Cucidati in a preheated 350F oven about 20 minutes, or until they are a light golden color. Cool, dust with confectioners' sugar and store the Cucidati in tins, between layers of wax paper.

Answer 4

I believe they are just plain old Italian Fig Cookies. I've listed a link to the recipe.

Answer 5

http://www.recipezaar.com/125801 is a link to a recipe for Cuccidati (Sicilian fig cookies). Enjoy.

Answer 6

Cuccidati

Answer 7

Might be cholocheas, not sure on spelling

Answer 8

cuccidatis

Answer 9

Favorite holiday delights include pretty Linzer, sugar and gingerbread cookies.
Christmas Cookies
Use plenty of butter and spice to make the best bite-size holiday treats

When I was a kid, no one could escape from our house during the holiday season without at least having a cup of coffee and some cookies made by my mother and those made by my Aunt Sandy. There were giuggiuleni (little footballs covered with sesame seeds), corral islands (our term for the jelly-filled thumbprint cookies), butterballs (a stubbier version of Mexican wedding cakes), triangles (thin, crisp wafers with walnuts and a hint of cinnamon) and mochas (nut crescents filled with cocoa and coffee). And if you didn't come to us, we came to you with plates covered in colorful plastic wrap and tied with both red and green ribbons.

Only the stoniest of hearts can resist a Christmas cookie. In fact, the allure of Christmas cookies is so pervasive it even seduces people for whom Christmas has no religious significance. "Christmas cookies are like turkey with Thanksgiving. It's what we think about for a holiday which is as much cultural as it is religious," says Rose Levy Beranbaum, who so loves Christmas cookies she authored Rose's Christmas Cookies (Morrow Cookbooks), despite the fact she is Jewish. "Nothing represents the spirit of loving, nurturing and giving more than a homemade cookie," Beranbaum writes.

Beranbaum's ecumenical approach to Christmas cookies allows her to list rugalach as her favorite. This crescent-shaped cookie made with cream-cheese dough and a fruit-and-nut filling is a traditional Hanukkah cookie. Hanukkah? Christmas? Close enough. But rugalach isn't exactly bursting with the color and pizzazz we associate with Christmas cookies. "Some people think Christmas cookies have to have spangles and all that kind of stuff," she says. "But most people think of Christmas cookies as their best cookies, when they want to offer something special."

Although Nick Malgieri, author of Cookies Unlimited (Morrow Cookbooks), agrees with this untraditional view, he feels that certain spices (such as allspice, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg) are still strongly associated with the season. "When we smell something baking with those spices, we say, 'It smells like Christmas,'" he notes. His family hails from southern Italy, as his cookie memories will attest. "A lot of the cookies we had, like biscotti, came from leftover dough used for pies like pizza rustica. Nobody had recipes written down. They just made cookies the way they were shown," he says.

Nuts and candied fruit are in the Christmas cookie pantry for obvious reasons: Nuts are in season and candied fruit magically (and for many, thankfully) tends to be abundant only in late fall. Dried fruits such as figs, dates and raisins are traditionally on the ingredients list, too. Cucciddati are Sicilian date-and-fig cookies that are my family's holiday favorite. Mom would pass figs and dates through a hand-cranked meat grinder clamped to the kitchen table. As if the filling, which includes walnuts, wasn't rich enough, the dough contains eggs and lard.

The egalitarian nature of Christmas cookies is also part of their appeal. "People who say they've never baked a pie or that the only cake they ever made collapsed, aren't intimidated by cookies," Malgieri says.

Chef Scott Campbell, of @SQC restaurant in New York, says his favorite cookie is the classic German pfeffernusse, made with spices, almonds and lemon peel. "That crisp texture and nutty inside evokes lots of memories," he says. "We'd come home from school, and the whole house smelled of cookies being baked for the open house we had on Christmas Eve. And, of course, I got to lick the batter off the spoons and beaters." In addition to pfeffernusse, Campbell creates a number of other cookies, many of which are variations of a basic sugar-cookie recipe (see below).

Santa Claus never gets cookies this good on Christmas Eve.
What makes a great Christmas cookie? "Christmas cookies are usually richer so it's OK to pull out all the stops at holiday time," Beranbaum says. For her that means butter, not margarine, and premium butter at that, because its lower moisture content yields a crisper result.


Countering the anyone-can-do-it philosophy, Maida Heatter, author of Maida Heatter's Brand-New Book of Great Cookies (Random House) thinks great cookies require attention. "Don't put the cookies into the oven and walk away. Keep an eye on them," says Heatter, who painstakingly fashions Christmas fortune-cookies stuffed with greetings printed on red or green paper. Malgieri says the way you measure flour is particularly important. "Spoon the flour into a dry measuring cup [not one meant for liquids] and level it off with a knife," he says. "Don't scoop the measuring cup into the flour, because you can get up to 20 percent more that way."

Even experienced bakers would do well to follow this tip from Flo Braker, author of The Simple Art of Perfect Baking (Chronicle Books): "So many times people will inadvertently double a recipe or leave out an ingredient. So roll out, form and bake just one cookie first. In eight minutes you'll know if you made a mistake," says Braker, whose favorite cookie is a simple strawberry jam-filled "little gem" topped with a pecan half, which she remembers from her childhood in Evansville, Ind.

For a beverage, milk fits the Rockwellian image. But adults need something more bracing to drink with cookies. Campbell serves hot chocolate made with French Valrhona chocolate. Beranbaum likes eiswein or Sauternes with nonchocolate cookies and Moscato di Pantelleria for chocolate ones. Heatter's favorite afternoon snack is cookies and Chardonnay. And why not? Malgieri says, "Nobody has codified cookies yet, so you can pretty much do what you want