Messina's Carnival sweet: little nuggets of egg-rich dough, deep-fried until golden and airy, then piled into a craggy mound shaped like a pine cone — pigna — and glazed two ways at once. One half of the mound is coated in a glossy white lemon icing, the other in dark chocolate, so each pignolata is split down the middle into pale and brown. It is sticky, crisp at the edges and soft inside, and unmistakably Messinese. This is the glazed pignolata of the city, quite distinct from the honey-soaked pignolata of Calabria and from Neapolitan struffoli.
The pignolata began as a poor sweet of the Sicilian Carnival, made from cheap pantry staples — eggs, flour and lard — and fried, in the old Arab-influenced manner of frying small balls of dough and bathing them in honey. Its name comes from pigna, the pine cone whose tight, scaled shape the heaped nuggets imitate. The glazed two-tone version is tied to the centuries of Spanish rule over Messina, when noble families are said to have had the humble dish reworked to suit grander tables: in place of honey it was dressed half in lemon icing and half in chocolate, the cacao itself arriving through the Spanish world. Today it is the signature sweet of Messina, made for Carnival but sold year-round, and the Italian agriculture ministry lists it among the traditional regional food products (PAT) as Pignolata di Messina.
A pleasant tug between textures: the fried nuggets are crisp and a little chewy at the edges, soft and almost hollow within, all held together by the set glaze. The white side is sharp and sweet, scenting of lemon and citron, with a thin candy crackle from the egg-white icing; the dark side is bittersweet and deeply chocolatey, softer and more yielding. You break a piece from the mound and it comes away in a sticky little cluster of two or three balls. Best eaten the day it is made, before the glaze weeps and the fried dough loses its edge.
Everything turns on three steps: the dough, the fry and the two glazes. The dough is enriched with egg and a little lard and is firm rather than soft, so the cut nuggets hold their shape; a splash of grappa helps them stay crisp. Dropped into hot oil at around 170 to 180°C, each piece sets fast on the outside while the water inside flashes to steam and puffs the crumb, giving the light, slightly hollow centre — fried in under a minute so it colours without drying. The white glaze is essentially a royal-style icing of powdered sugar beaten with a little egg white and lemon juice, which dries to a firm, opaque, faintly crackly shell as the sugar recrystallises around the egg protein. The chocolate glaze is simply melted dark chocolate loosened with a little fat and warm water, which sets soft and glossy as the cocoa butter recrystallises on cooling. The two are spooned over the two halves of the warm mound so they grip the nuggets and fuse them into a single pine-cone shape without the colours bleeding into one another.
Variations
The constant is the two-tone glaze — white lemon on one side, chocolate on the other — but the details move around. The white icing may be flavoured with citron (cedro) essence or plain lemon, and is sometimes made as a cooked sugar fondant rather than a raw egg-white icing; the chocolate side is usually scented with vanilla. Some bakers add finely chopped or candied citrus peel, others top the mound with a few colored sprinkles. The dough may be bound with butter instead of lard and flavoured with vanilla or anise as well as lemon. It should not be confused with the very different honey pignolata (pignoccata) of Calabria and other parts of Sicily, where the same fried nuggets are bound simply in honey, with no chocolate.
On the Palate
Where Pignolata Messinese sits in the Italian flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 8
How it's made
7 steps · 1 hour active + 30 min waiting
- 140 min
Make the dough: mound the flour with the sugar and a pinch of salt, make a well, and work in the eggs, melted-and-cooled lard, grated lemon zest and a splash of grappa. Knead until smooth and firm, then rest, covered, for about 30 minutes.
- 215 min
Take a piece of dough at a time and roll it into ropes about 1 cm thick. Cut the ropes into small nuggets roughly 1 cm long and lightly round them between your hands.
Watch outCut the ropes into small nuggets and keep the dough firm — a firm dough holds these little shapes instead of spreading in the oil.
- 318 min
Heat the oil or lard to about 170 to 180°C. Fry the nuggets in batches, turning, for under a minute until puffed and golden, then lift out and drain well on paper. Let them cool.
Watch outFry at 170 to 180C for under a minute until puffed and golden — each nugget should balloon light and hollow; longer and it dries out.
- 412 min
Make the white glaze: beat the powdered sugar with a little egg white and the lemon juice into a thick, opaque icing that coats a spoon. Make the chocolate glaze: melt the dark chocolate, then stir in a little butter and a spoon of hot water until smooth and glossy.
- 56 min
Divide the cooled nuggets into two roughly equal piles. Toss one pile in the white glaze and the other in the chocolate glaze until each piece is well coated.
- 68 min
While the glazes are still soft, build the mound: heap the white-glazed nuggets on one side and the chocolate-glazed nuggets on the other to form a single pine-cone shape split into pale and dark, keeping the two colours from running together.
Watch outHeap the two colors on separate sides while the glaze is still soft — let them run together and you lose the split pale-and-dark cone.
- 720 min
Leave the pignolata to stand until the glazes set firm, then serve the day it is made.
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