Madonie desserts: testa di turco, sfoglio and more

The typical desserts of the Madonie are few, closely tied to one town and almost all recognised as traditional products of Sicily. Castelbuono has testa di turco, the spoon dessert of the winter holidays, and the manna panettone born in Piazza Margherita. Polizzi Generosa has sfoglio, the cake filled with tuma cheese and chocolate invented by the nuns. Gratteri makes fennel biscuits, taralle and vastedda fritta.

At a glance

Dessert	Town	What it is	When
Testa di turco	Castelbuono	fried pastry sheets and cinnamon milk cream	from the Immaculate Conception to Carnival
Sfoglio	Polizzi Generosa, Castellana Sicula	shortcrust filled with tuma, chocolate, candied pumpkin and cinnamon	feast days, also in pastry shops
Panettone and manna leavened cakes	Castelbuono	leavened cakes with manna, citrus and almonds	Christmas and Easter
S biscuits	Gratteri	sourdough biscuits with fennel seeds	all year, fresh
Taralle (savoiarde)	Gratteri	oval biscuits of eggs, sugar and flour	all year, fresh
Vastedda fritta	Gratteri	fried bread dough, with sugar or salt	all year, festival in August

Testa di turco from Castelbuono

What it is

Testa di turco is a spoon dessert. The technical sheet of the Sicilian Region describes it as layers of thin fried pastry sheets and “a very delicate milk cream scented with cinnamon and lemon”. It is on the national list of traditional food products.

In the sheet’s version the pastry is made with flour, whole eggs and lard. It is rolled thin, cut into rectangles of about 10 centimetres, scored with four parallel cuts and fried: as they cook the strips rise and fall and take on the shape of a turban. Then they are covered with cream and dusted with grated chocolate.

Other versions, like the one from the Pro Loco of Castelbuono published by ilSicilia in 2020, finish with cinnamon and coloured sprinkles. The step-by-step recipe is in the guide to traditional Madonie recipes.

When it is eaten and why it has that name

In Castelbuono it was the festive dessert, from the Immaculate Conception to Carnival, Luciana Cusimano of the Friends of the Civic Museum association told ilSicilia. Every family has its own recipe and its secret ingredient, and people still argue about whether egg yolk belongs in the cream.

Two legends explain the name, neither documented:

• the dessert was created to celebrate the Normans driving out the Arabs;
• the dimples in the cream recall the soft spots on the head of a baby not yet baptised, hence a “Turk”, meaning not Christian.

Do not confuse it with the testa di turco of Scicli, a large filled choux pastry linked to the feast of the Madonna delle Milizie. The regional sheet itself warns that in many places on the island the same name refers to different desserts.

Sfoglio from Polizzi Generosa

What it is

Sfoglio, sfuagghiu in dialect, is a shortcrust pastry cake filled with tuma, pecorino at its first stage of maturing, chocolate, sugar and cinnamon. Many recipes add zuccata, candied pumpkin.

According to the tourism website of Polizzi Generosa, it was invented between the 17th and 18th centuries by the Benedictine nuns of the convents of Santa Margherita and Santa Maria delle Grazie, the Old Abbey and the New Abbey. Tradition links the recipe to the feast of Saint Benedict and to a summer visit by Count Roger: in summer the ricotta was watery and poor, so the nuns chose the tuma that shepherds gave them for the use of their pastures.

When the convents closed, the recipe passed to local families. Today every household has its own version, and you also find sfoglio in the town’s pastry shops.

A disputed recognition

Sfoglio is on the list of traditional products of Sicily, but the regional sheet attributes it to Castellana Sicula, with a dough worked with wine and a filling of almonds, chocolate, tuma and candied pumpkin. In 2019 Balarm reported that Polizzi’s pastry makers had set up a consortium to protect the recipe, and mentioned a summer festival in town.

In 2018 ANSA covered the dispute between Polizzi Generosa and Petralia Soprana, which had given sfoglio its own municipal designation: Polizzi threatened to go to court. The recipe with quantities is in the guide to traditional Madonie recipes.

Castelbuono panettone and manna sweets

Castelbuono is the manna town, and manna found its way into desserts. The best-known story is Fiasconaro’s: according to the company, in 1953 Mario Fiasconaro opened a small ice cream shop in Piazza Margherita, known for citrus granitas made with snow stored in the Madonie. His sons, back in town after years of training, steered the great Italian leavened cake towards Sicilian ingredients: citrus, almonds, pistachios and manna.

Today its panettoni and colombe leave Castelbuono for more than 75 countries. The pastry shop in Piazza Margherita has its own page: Fiasconaro in Castelbuono.

Manna is also used in home baking: cakes, biscuits, puddings and creams, the Slow Food Presidium writes. For what it is, how it is harvested and how to recognise it, see the guide to Madonie manna.

Biscuits, taralle and vastedda from Gratteri

Gratteri, above Cefalù, has three products on the regional list of traditional products, all baked or fried and best eaten fresh. The regional sheets describe them as follows:

• S biscuits: S-shaped, chestnut-coloured biscuits made with flour, lard, sourdough starter (crescenti), sugar and fennel seeds. The village bakeries make them with a recipe handed down since the early 1900s.
• Savoiarde or taralle: oval golden biscuits of whipped eggs, sugar, flour and a pinch of bicarbonate, baked at 200 °C on an oiled tray. They are eaten within a few days.
• Vastedda fritta: leavened bread dough cut into irregular shapes and fried in hot oil, then dusted with sugar or salt. It is eaten hot.

The village holds a festival for the vastedda in mid-August, the Sagra della Vastedda Fritta, with frying in the square and a parade of Sicilian carts. For local places, see where to eat in Gratteri.

Ice cream, hazelnuts and festive sweets

Two summer festivals round out the picture of Madonie sweets:

• at the end of July Castellana Sicula hosts the Festival del Gelato Madonita, with flavours created for the occasion by local ice cream makers from Madonie products;
• on the third Sunday of August Polizzi Generosa celebrates its hazelnuts with the Sagra delle Nocciole.

In December, from the long weekend of the Immaculate Conception, Dolcemente Castelbuono brings the town’s historic pastry shops together in a village of wooden huts, with free tastings, a giant buccellato and testa di turco. Buccellato is also among the traditional products of Sicily.

Where to buy typical desserts

• In Castelbuono: the pastry shops of the old town, starting from Piazza Margherita. The list with source and date of check is in where to eat in Castelbuono.
• In Polizzi Generosa: sfoglio in the town’s pastry shops; see where to eat in Polizzi Generosa.
• In Gratteri: biscuits and taralle in the bakeries, vastedda at the August festival.
• Anywhere: in the list of places to eat in the Madonie you can filter pastry shops by town.

For the rest of Madonie cooking, from cheese to beans, read what to eat in the Madonie. If you want to pair a dessert with a festival, the Madonie food festival calendar lists them by season.