On the Easter weekend I attempted to share a post about my experience of going to a cooking class to make a Maltese Easter treat called Figolli. We were away that weekend. Unfortunately I was about 45 minutes away from home when I realised that I hadn't even thought about taking my laptop with me. I had been so tired on the Thursday night that I didn't just finish off my Saturday post so I thought I would just use the Blogger app to just do the last bit. That was a mistake. That removed all the photos and added in about 50 paragraph lines for each time I wanted a break which made it unreadable. I am therefore reposting it this week!
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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!
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We started with all of our pre-measured ingredients
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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
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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
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The figolli is formed with a layer of pastry, the almond paste, another layer of pastry and milk wash.
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And then off to cook in the professional kitchen ovens
Once the creation was baked and cooled 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 seen figolli, let alone knew 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!
It was very cool and a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Oh, and it tasted delicious!!
Weekly meals
What a fun class! Really cute.
ReplyDeleteIt was a fun class Melynda!
DeleteThis sounds fun, although I don't like marzipan. My coworker was showing me pictures of rabbit-shaped Easter cakes (she must use a mold) that her mother in law makes every year (with varying success) but the grandchildren love to decorate when they arrive.
ReplyDeleteA book for your TBR which you will love - Mrs. Quinn's Rise to Fame by Olivia Ford. 77 year old heroine who applies to be on Britain's Baking Show without telling anyone in her family. I will not put the link to my review because you might enjoy it more not knowing any more than that.
That definitely sounds like my kind of book CLM!
DeleteCooking classes are such fun. I haven't done one since the day before the world locked down, Mar 10, 2020. I've done a few virtual since then. I must look and see if there are any around.
ReplyDeleteThis was the first one I have done for a while Jackie!
DeleteSo many traditions! That's a fun way to spend an afternoon.
ReplyDeleteIt was really fun Mae!
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