Sicilian Sweets

Mostarda di Mosto

I've already mentioned some of the sweets that are common in Sicily like cannoli and breasts of Saint Agata.  Recently I came across Mostarda di Mosto (Mostarda di Uva) or grape must pudding, which must be from the Greek influence on the island because a search for "grape must pudding" brings up a lot of Greek recipes for Moustalevria, even the Spruce Eats has a recipe for it, and the ingredients are the same: boiled down grape must (juice from pressed grapes), some sort of flour for thickener, walnuts and cinnamon.  To get the Sicilian recipe you need to search the Italian term.  For a very traditional recipe, using the terra cotta molds that you see in the photo above, visit Scorzette.com's recipe for Grape Mustard.  And for more on the terra cotta molds, called formelle, see Mostarda and Cotognata -- Sweets in Molds.  I wouldn't mind picking one up as a souvenir.

Sicilians enjoy a lot of fruits and the prickly pear cactus fruit (fichi d'India -- Indian figs) are especially popular for gelatos and puddings and eating out of hand (they simply swallow all those seeds).  There are particularly large ones called bastardoni, produced by cutting off the first set of flowers so that the second set ripens in the fall and produces a larger fruit when there is more rainfall.  These are a specialty of eastern Sicily.  The earlier crop of smaller fruits are called agostani, because they ripen in August.  You can also make mostarda out of fichi and fichi d'India.

Another Sicilian fruit dessert that I have always found fascinating is the watermelon pudding or gelo di anguria.  They sometimes put the pudding into a pie crust and typically use chocolate bits to mimic the seeds, although now with seedless watermelons there are many more versions without the chocolate.  Sometimes they sprinkle pistachios on top.  You will find pistachios sprinkled on top of lots of things, sweet and savory.  The town of Bronte on the western side of Mt. Etna is famous for pistachios, the only place in Europe that grows them.

And you will find gelatos and granitas made out of both prickly pears and watermelon.

Rosetta Constantino, a Calabrian, has a book out on Southern Italian Desserts, covering Calabria, Campania, Basilicata, Puglia and Sicily.  She has recipes for numerous Sicilian sweets, including the Watermelon pudding, cannoli, gelato and cassata.  You'll find lots of nuts (almonds, pistachios, hazelnuts and sesame seeds) and lots of ricotta in her recipes.  And for those whose ancestors came from Campania, she has a recipe for sfogliatelle, those multilayered pastries filled with ricotta that we used to buy in the Strip District.