I have a rule about recipes: if I make something once and immediately think about when I'm making it again, that's the one. That's the recipe that earns a place in the rotation.
These cantucci earned it on the first try.
The kind of thing you make once and make forever.
Ingredients
- 150g caster sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 tablespoons Tutto Sicilia Sicilian Pistachio Cream
- 250g plain flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 100g shelled pistachios, roughly chopped
- Pinch of sea salt
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 170°C. Line a baking tray with parchment.
- Whisk eggs and sugar together until pale and slightly thickened, about 2 minutes.
- Stir in the pistachio cream until fully combined.
- Add flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix to a stiff dough.
- Fold in the chopped pistachios.
- Shape the dough into two logs on your tray, roughly 25cm long and 5cm wide. They'll spread a little — give them room.
- Bake for 20 minutes until pale gold and just set. Remove and cool for 10 minutes.
- Slice on the diagonal into 1.5cm pieces. Lay cut-side down and bake again for 12–15 minutes until dry and golden.
- Cool completely on a rack. They crisp up as they cool.
Nonna's Notes
You can dip each cantucci in melted white chocolate once cooled or leave them bare if it's mid-week and it's the last thing you do before going to bed that evening. You'll have cantucci in the morning.
Cantucci are the original biscotti — Tuscan in origin, but Sicily adopted them the way Sicily adopts everything good: with pistachio. Twice-baked, properly crisp, made for dunking into something warm. The pistachio cream gets stirred right into the dough, which means every bite has that deep, nutty flavour running through it — not just a swipe on top, but woven in.
They keep for a week in a tin. They also disappear before that's ever been tested.
→ Shop Sicilian Pistachio Cream
Make a double batch. You'll understand why.
