Turdilli are similar to Struffoli – both are dripping in honey, however Turdilli cookies include a special ingredient – wine! Turdilli are native to Calabria, but Italians and Italian Americans everywhere enjoy them.
I’ve seen recipes that use red vermouth but any sweet wine will do. These look like gnocchi, and you can use the gnocchi paddle to get the ridges or simply use a fork!
I’ve borrowed this simple recipe from Cooking with Nonna. This is for a HUGE batch, so if you want less, halve the ingredients.
Fried turdilli. Photograph credit: Cooking with Nonna.
Ingredients:
- 1 pound flour
- 5 ounces honey
- 4 1/2 ounces extra virgin olive oil
- 8 1/2 ounces Moscato wine or any white sweet wine
- cinnamon powder
- 1 orange zest
- oil for frying
Directions
- In a mixing bowl, add flour, EV olive oil, wine, cinnamon and the zest of an orange finely grated.
- Work the dough gently and amalgamate all the ingredients.
- Take a piece of dough, roll it and make a 1 inch flat strip. Cut the strip in small pieces of about 1 inch.
- With a fork impress lines onto each of the pieces and curl them into small cylinders.
- Fry all your Turdilli.
- In a pan at low heat melt the honey and add the juice of one orange.
- Let it cool and pour over the Turdilli.
Baking together may bring back memories from your childhood, or you may be making new memories with your children and grandchildren. Either way, I hope you enjoy these delicious Italian wine cookies!
Angela DiCicco
The Italian Grandmama
Contact me: theitaliangrandmama@gmail.com
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My deceased Italian aunt (RIP) used to make something like this where she would use a wash board to roll the dough and make ridges in it , deep fry in oil then dip in Karo syrup . She called it canadicelle ( something like that word ) . I wish I had her recipe but unfortunately I do not . Do you know of such cookie that’s similar to Turdilli ?
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I will ask on The Italian Grandmama’s Guide Community on Facebook!
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Turdili/scallile my grandmother used to make a fried cookie that looked like scalille but had wine and cinnamon like the turdili and the dough had to rise. I haven’t been able to find what it was on line. These two are the closest I’ve gotten. We called them
( cougerege) or something like that.
Help!!?!
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