The Intrepid Reader and Baker: Weekend Cooking: Figolli

Recently my friend and I attended a cooking class run by the Maltese Community Council of Victoria. The class was to make a traditional Easter treat called Figolli which consists of a layer of marzipan sandwiched between pastry and cut into various shapes. In our case we made rabbit shaped figolli.

We started with all of our pre-measured ingredients

We were then shown how to make the pastry. The recipe we were given includes the instructions on how to make it using a mixer but for this occasion we made it using the time honoured technique of using our fingers to mix the flour and butter until it became like breadcrumbs and then adding in the extra ingredients to form a dough

From there, we rolled out our pastry and cut out the rabbit shape. One handy tip we were given was to cut the dough into halves, and then cutting out the shape. When re-rolling, take a bit of the second half of dough so that it helps keep it more pliable.

We then made the almond filling using a mixture of ground almonds, caster sugar, egg whites and almond essence

The figolli is formed with a layer of pastry, the almond paste, another layer of pastry and milk wash.

And then off to cook in the professional kitchen ovens

Cooked but pre decoration

Once the creation was baked it is time to ice. We used the biggest batch of royal icing I have ever seen as a base, and then we coloured small amounts of icing and used various decorations that we were supplied to decorate. You can also use melted chocolate to decorate

Given that I had never even tasted figolli, let alone kneam w what they tasted like, I tried to stay pretty close to the shapes and decoration that was suggested. Other people in the group obviously have more experience and so there were a variety of other shapes and decorations being used.

The class was held in a a cooking school kitchen, so there were proper commercial ovens, all the equipment you could possibly need, stainless steel benches!