One of the many great joys of the Catholic faith is the way that feast days and holidays demarcate the year and provide us with seasons that are meaningful and connected to tradition. In a less busy world, I would cook a themed meal for every Catholic feast day and invite my friends and family over to celebrate. In our more constrained one, I recommend an All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day showstopper — the crunchy spice cookies shaped like bones and known in Italy as “Ossa dei Morti,” or “Bones of the Dead.”
A person’s association with Italian desserts will depend on his or her frame of reference. Those who happen to live near an authentic Italian bakery probably already love the country’s formal and lavish pastry tradition. Those whose only exposure is the dry and tasteless “Italian assortment” cookie tray from the supermarket will be less enthusiastic. Both, however, will recognize that Italy’s cream fillings, rum soaks, fried shells, piped doughs, chocolate dips and green maraschino cherries aren’t exactly home cooking. Most recipes for supposed Italian specialities, especially cookies, don’t come close to the real thing.
The following recipe is the real thing. To source it, I turned to Victoria Granof, a celebrity food stylist, creative director and the author of the cookbook “Sicily, My Sweet.” Victoria also writes a Substack, Delicious Tangents, about her adventures in the food world, and conducts custom food-tourism tours of Sicily. Years ago, while doing research in Sicily for a previous cookbook, Granof learned the secret to Bones of the Dead cookies, which she describes as “rock hard,” “matte white” and “dearly beloved by Sicilians of all ages.” The dough is very simple, in its most basic form calling for only three ingredients, but the authentic technique is highly unusual: You make a flour-and-spice mix; add a boiling sugar liquid; knead and shape the dough; and then let the unbaked cookies dry out for three days. Dip the bottoms of the cookies in water just before baking.
Despite the unpromising plan and ingredients, I knew the Bones of the Dead were something special from the first step, when the mixture of clove, sugar and flour released a scent as fragrant and magical as oleo-saccharum (infused sugar oils, wildly heady when made at home and also highly recommended). And I was right. The dough was stiff and hard to work with; the shaped cookies were flour-covered and ugly; and yet the finished product was like almost nothing I’ve ever tasted — shatteringly crunchy, a tiny bit chewy within, like a cross between candy and a cookie. (Granof says the cookies shouldn’t be at all chewy inside, but drying time is variable depending on humidity.) Like the promised “Sicilians of all ages,” everyone who tried them loved them, including my children. Usually not interested in adult-seeming spice cookies, they were intrigued by the bone shape and ate the whole plate.
Ossa dei Morti
Makes 28
— 400 grams flour
— 1 teaspoon cinnamon
— 3/4 teaspoon cloves
— 400 gram sugar
— 100 milliliters water
1. Mix the flour and spices in a large bowl. 2. Add the water to a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Immediately add the sugar, and stir until the water starts to bubble around the edges. Do not let the water come to a boil, and do not let the sugar dissolve. 3. Add the hot sugar-liquid to the dry ingredients all at once, and stir to combine. Crunch with your hands to make a ball of dough. If it’s really not coming together, you can add more water by the tablespoon. Knead for a few minutes until smooth. 4. Break the dough into three equal portions and cover with a damp cloth. Lightly flour a work surface. Immediately, while the dough is still warm, use your hands to shape the ball into a tube, and then roll out into a long snake, slightly less than 1 inch in diameter. (It’s helpful to use a measuring tape here, to be sure your dough is not too thick). 5. Cut in 3-inch segments. Using the handle of a butter knife, or other convenient implement, make an indentation on each end of the segments to look like “bones.” 6. Leave the cookies out, uncovered, to dry out for three days. When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350°F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. 7. Set out a bowl of warm water, and dip the base of each cookie in the water for 10 seconds before placing it on the cookie sheet. 8. Bake for 20 minutes, until the cookies release a puddle of sugar. (If they don’t do this, it’s OK; they probably weren’t dry enough, but they’ll still taste good.) Cool and serve.
