Italian Dessert Recipes

Authentic Italian Dessert Recipes To Make Old-Fashioned Italian Desserts

These superb Italian dessert recipes will let you capture the traditional taste of Old Italy. You will love trying the authentic milk gnocchi, zabaglione, stuffed peaches, Sienese hardbake, riso all'Imperatrice (a kind of rice pudding recipe), and Italian macaroons. A wonderful selection of old-time treats.

Words simply cannot describe the delicious homemade taste you are about to experience. As your Italian uncle would say, "Questi dessert Italiani sono squisiti."

Gnocchi di Latte, or Milk Gnocchi

One quart of milk; sugar, nine ounces; cornstarch in powder, four ounces; eight yolks of eggs, a taste of vanilla.

Mix everything together as you would do for a cream and put on the fire in a saucepan, continually stirring with a ladle. When the mixture has become hard keep it a few moments more on the fire and then pour it in a plate to make it about half an inch thick and cut it into diamonds when it is cold. Put these diamonds one over the other with symmetry in a baking tin or in a fireproof glass plate, with some little pieces of butter in between, and brown them a little in the oven. Serve hot.

Zabaione, or Sabayon

Yolks of three eggs; granulated sugar, two ounces; Marsala or sherry wine, five tablespoonfuls; a dash of cinnamon. First stir with the ladle the yolks and the sugar until they become almost white, then add the wine. When ready to serve, place the saucepan in another one containing hot water and beat until the sugar is melted and the egg begins to thicken.

Pesche Ripiene, or Stuffed Peaches

Six big peaches not very ripe; four or five lady finger biscuits; granulated sugar, three ounces; two ounces sweet almonds with three peach kernels; candied fruit (angelica) half an ounce.

Cut the peaches in two parts, remove the stones, and enlarge somewhat the cavity where they were with the point of a knife.

Mix the peach pulp that you extract with the almonds, already skinned, and grind the pulp and the almonds very fine together with two ounces of the sugar. To this mixture add the lady fingers crumbed and the candied fruits. Cut in very small cubes. This will be the stuffing with which you will fill the cavities of the twelve halves of peach. These you will place in a row in a baking tin, with the stuffing above. Add the remaining ounce of sugar and bake in oven with a moderate fire.

Pan-forte di Siena (Sienese Hardbake)

Ingredients: Honey, almonds, filberts, candied lemon peel, pepper, cinnamon, chocolate, corn flour, large wafers.

Boil half a pound of honey in a copper vessel, and then add to it a few blanched almonds and filberts cut in halves or quarters and slightly browned, a little candied lemon peel, a dust of pepper and powdered cinnamon, and a quarter pound of grated chocolate. Mix all well together, and gradually add a tablespoonful of corn flour end two of ground almonds to thicken it.

Then take the vessel off the fire, spread the mixture on large wafers, and make each cake about an inch thick. Garnish them on the top with almonds cut in half, and dust over a little powdered sugar and cinnamon, then put them in a very slow oven for an hour.

Riso all'Imperatrice (Rice Pudding)

Ingredients: Rice, sugar, milk, ice, preserved fruits, blanc mange, Maraschino, cream.

Boil two dessertspoonfuls of rice and one of sugar in milk. When sufficiently boiled, drain the rice and let it get cold. In the meantime place a mold on ice, and decorate it with slices of preserved fruit, and fix them to the mold with just enough nearly cold dissolved isinglass (gelatin) to keep them in place. Also put half a pint of blancmange on the ice, and stir it till it is the right consistency, gradually add the boiled rice, half a glass of Maraschino, some bits of pineapple cut in dice, and last of all half a pint of whipped cream.

Fill the mold with this, and when it is sufficiently cold, turn it out and serve with a garnish of glace fruits or a few brandy cherries.

Zabaglione

Ingredients: Eggs, sugar, Marsala, Maraschino or other light-colored liqueur, sponge fingers.

Zabaglione is a kind of syllabub. It is made with Marsala and Maraschino, or Marsala and yellow Chartreuse.

This traditional Italian dessert recipe reckons the quantities as follows: for each person the yolks of three eggs, one teaspoonful of castor sugar to each egg, and a wineglass of wine and liqueur mixed. Whip up the yolks of the eggs with the sugar, then gradually add the wine. Put this in a bain-marie, and stir until it has thickened to the consistency of a custard. Take care, however, that it does not boil. Serve hot in custard glasses, and hand sponge fingers with it.

Pan-forte di Siena (Sienese Hardbake)

Ingredients: Honey, almonds, filberts, candied lemon peel, pepper, cinnamon, chocolate, corn flour, large wafers.

Boil half a pound of honey in a copper vessel, and then add to it a few blanched almonds and filberts cut in halves or quarters and slightly browned, a little candied lemon peel, a dust of pepper and powdered cinnamon, and a quarter pound of grated chocolate. Mix all well together, and gradually add a tablespoonful of corn flour and two of ground almonds to thicken it.

Then take the vessel off the fire, spread the mixture on large wafers, and make each cake about an inch thick. Garnish them on the top with almonds cut in half, and dust over a little powdered sugar and cinnamon, then put them in a very slow oven for an hour.