A bocconotto (or boconotto) is a pastry typical of the Italian regions of Puglia. It is often eaten at Christmas.
Its filling varies according to the region in which it is produced. In Abruzzo, this filling may contain cocoa powder, cinnamon, and toasted almonds.
The popular legend traces the development of this dessert at the end of the eighteenth century, in the Abruzzo region. At that time the importation of chocolate and coffee just started. It is said that in a country of Abruzzo a maid invented a sweet whose shape recalled a the cup of coffee (of course without handle and lid) to pay homage to her lord, greedy of these two new products, realizing the outside with the pastry and filling the interior with coffee and chocolate liquid. At first she saw that the stuffing remained too liquid then she decided to thicken it with almonds (which were imported from Puglia) and egg yolks and cover the “cup” with a lid dusted with icing sugar . When the master tasted it he was ecstatic and asked her maid the name of that pastry. The woman, who had not given it a name, improvised calling it “Bocconotto” because you ate in a bite. The size of the bocconotto remained small until the 1950’s when their size began to increase. According to others bocconotto originated in the Murgia area where inland farmers who were forced to live in tight and narrow spaces created and adapted this pastry to their own culinary needs.
Even today, the tradition of the recipe has been handed down from family to family, with many variants.
The name comes from the fact that these cakes are small enough to be eaten in one bite, accompanied by sweet wine.
There is a sweet and salty variant.
The variant is always sweet made of pastry with a filling that can be made of honey or jam or chocolate according to regional variations.
The savory version varies both in filling and in the casing: the pastry is replaced by the puff pastry and using a mixture of mushrooms, chicken giblets, sweetbreads and truffle, instead of the chocolate and almonds.
In the version of the Brindisi, the filling of jam is usually pear or apple.
Bocconotti
