FAVE DEI MORTI, cookies for the dead
Fave dei morti is one of those characteristic delicious sweets that have been prepared for years in many Italian regions on the occasion of the feast of November 2nd.
Flavors and Knowledge
FOTO:{Image Attribution via Wikipedia Commons}
As we celebrate the Day of the Dead, I am sharing a recipe that does not have anything to do with fava or broad beans. The name is deceiving and misleading, but dishes of intense symbolic value come out when cuisine meets history and tradition. There are many occasions in which religion, culinary tradition, legend, and cult have mixed.
Let me begin by saying that the holidays have no connection to Halloween. In countries like Mexico, the tradition of painted faces, creative costumes, and parades filled with dances and songs fill the sky with respect for lost loved ones.
Fave dei morti is one of those characteristic delicious sweets that have been prepared for years in many Italian regions on the occasion of the feast of November 2nd. Preparing fave di morti is a tradition that reoccurs every year and just about everywhere in the country.
In the past, however, it was the beans that were the protagonists of this anniversary. Thus, between history and legend, several myths surround this particular dessert. Legumes and the afterlife world have been a formality since the days of the Roman Empire, appearing in the forms of food altars. Sicily, for instance, is well-known for assembling and displaying food-related centerpieces in foyers of homes.
In various areas of Italy, when an illustrious person or a nobleman passed on, the beans were boiled and distributed to the less fortunate people. The name fava dei morti derives from this particular habit, and over time, more delicious ingredients replaced the beans, making the recipe much more delicate, lighter, and uniquely different.
If you intend to make fave dei morti, remember that it only has three ingredients, just enough to make the softest traditional sweets to greet the dead. So it is conceivably a good idea to turn November 2nd into a baking day and an annual event involving children.
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For traditional fava dei morti, below is the recipe to follow. And for a creative and fanciful touch, it is also possible to color the sweets. I wrote the recipe in metric measurements, as I often do for accuracy purposes when baking. So get yourself one of those converter apps, and you can begin!
Ingredients:
400 grams of almonds or pine nuts
400 grams of granulated sugar
80 grams of egg whites
Two tablespoons of alchermes
One teaspoon of vanilla extract
Two tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa
Procedure
To make delicious colored broad beans of the dead, you will need to toast the almonds or pine nuts in the oven for a couple of minutes. Then, chop them with the help of a mixer. Add the sugar and then the egg white. Mix carefully to avoid lumps.
Once you have created the basic dough, place it on a work table lightly dusted with powdered sugar and knead by hand for a few minutes. At this point, divide the dough into three equal parts to give a touch of color to the fava dei morti.
Next, add the vanilla extract to one of the three parts of the dough. In the second, add the alchermes, and finally, in the last part of the dough, add the bitter cocoa.
Next, knead the individual pieces to mix the ingredients. Then, form three balls, wrap them in cling film, and place them in the fridge for 12 hours.
Subsequently, take the dough and create many small balls, lightly flattened in the center. In this way, we will have the fava dei morti of different colors and ready to be cooked. Bake in a preheated oven at 130 degrees for about 10 minutes, with a static oven.
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