Ingredients
For dough
3 cups of flour
6 eggs
6 tablespoons of olive oil
6 tablespoons of sugar
2 teaspoons of Magic baking powder
For brushing
1 egg yolk, beaten
For decoration
1 hard-boiled egg, boiled and still in its shell
For basket mold
Olive tree branches (No bark; cleaned and processed)
Cotton thread
Directions
Create a basket form out of appropriate materials (ones which can safely be baked with dough in the oven).*
Mix eggs, oil and sugar.
Add flour.
Work into a fine dough (knead 10 to 15 minutes).
When the dough is malleable, shiny and light colored, then the dough can be shaped.
Shape the sweet taralli dough into a long log.
Weave the log into the basket form.
Attach a hard-boiled egg (still in its shell) with bands of dough.
Brush the weaved dough with egg yolk.
Bake in a preheated oven of 325 F degrees for about 25 minutes or until the dough is golden.
*In the late 1940s home cooks in Santa Croce used olive tree branches to mold their baskets. The branches were first stripped of their bark, and then they were cleaned and processed. Cotton thread was used to tie the branches together. Nowadays, "vimini," a material often used by professional weavers to make baskets, could conceivably be used instead of olive tree branches.
Notes
Tony Alfieri, Mary Melfi's brother-in-law, recalls that when he was growing up in Santa Croce in the late 1940s it was the custom to make three-dimensional baskets out of dough and give them to young girls as presents for Easter. The baskets were made with "sweet taralli dough." However, he himself does not know the recipe that was then in use. All he is sure of is that the cooks used a sweet taralli dough to make the baskets.... The basket shown in the photo to right was made by Tony Alfieri. Despite it being quite pretty (and good to eat) he insisted that it didn't come close to the real thing. |
