Where to Find Traditional Italian Christmas Sweets in Boston (and Beyond)

From the classic double-baked biscotti to a mountain of bite-sized, honey-covered fried dough balls know as struffoli, Italian sweets have always been a Christmas staple for my Italian family and for families throughout history. There was nothing better than finding a little box of nougat torrone at the bottom of my stocking under a pile of Jordan almonds, which it turns out were eaten in Rome back in 177 BC.

The way I remember my Sicilian nonnie was at the head of the table, surrounded by glass domes showcasing her homemade Italian cookies. I can still smell the anise. Saving the best for last, she’d unveil her delicate cannoli shells, stuffing each full of creamy ricotta with a butter knife, never breaking a single one. Later, as a teenager standing inside an Italian cookie shop holding the thickest, most obtrusive cannoli shell I’d ever seen, I asked the baker, “What happened?” That was the day I learned that at least some Italian bakeries hide their thinner (authentic) shells out back—you just have to know to ask.

The older I got, the more I understood. My nonnie’s father (my great-grandfather) had immigrated to Boston in the early 1900s from the ancient hilltops of Caltanissetta province, where cannoli were first made by concubines in the 9th century during Arab rule. When the cannoli arrived in the US with the wave of 4.2 million Italians that included my great-grandfather, new variations emerged due to a lack of ingredients.

In the present day, my nonnie’s recipes have been photocopied and tucked into little tins just like hers. The second I start cranking cannoli pastry dough through the pasta maker, it’s like my dad’s right back in the kitchen beside me. And I’ve also come to find a history of baking on the other side of his family, thanks to my recent travels in Southern Italy to trace my roots. My dad’s paternal Calabrian grandfather, Frank Fiorentino, opened and ran Orient Heights Bakery for over 30 years post-Prohibition in the Italian neighborhood of East Boston. “Fiorentino” is still cemented into his old building.

In the spirit of Italy, Christmas, and anyone with a sweet tooth, this is the ancient history of several Italian Christmas sweets—and several authentic North End bakeries (and one worth a trip up to Portland, Maine) still carrying on the tradition.

Pizzelle. / Photo by billnoll/Getty Images

Pizzelle

This quintessential anise waffle cookie, hailing from 8^th-century Abruzzo, was once served at the ancient Festival of Snakes in a town overrun with actual serpents. Each year, after the serpents were cleared out, villagers would celebrate by eating pizzelle. The snakes are gone, but the festival is still celebrated each May, and in July, villagers in the neighboring town of Salle hang pizzelle from the trees and hand them out as an offering. (The cookie’s inspiration reportedly goes back even further, deriving from the early days of Christianity, where flatbread was stamped with crosses to be used as the Holy Eucharist in Rome.) I make them with anise; others use vanilla or almond extract. My sister gets creative with ginger or chocolate.

Where to buy: Parziale’s Bakery

Parziale’s has remained a North End treasure since Giuseppe “Joe” Parziale with his wife Anna emigrated from the world’s pizza capital of Naples. Opening their doors in 1907, originally on Charter Street, they were the first to bring pizza to New England, as the story goes—but the pastries and cookies are just as good. The shop is still in the family generations later, and their pizzelle is a classic.

80 Prince St., North End, Boston, 617-523-6368, parzialesbakery.com.

Almond biscotti. / Photo by Gary Friedman/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Biscotti

The O.G. biscotti was double-baked for soldiers in ancient Rome, dry and hard so they would travel well (and were also good for dipping in coffee). With the Latin roots “bis” meaning twice and “cotus” for cooked, the cookie re-emerged after the Dark Ages in the mid 1800s when a childless Italian baker named Antonio Mattei was awarded for his biscotti cookie art in Florence, London, and even Paris. His exact recipe is still kept secret by the fourth-generation family who inherited and has continued to run his Florence bakery since 1904, where a museum was opened to pay tribute to Mattei’s biscotti art. They also run his original Antonio Mattei bakery in his hometown Tuscan city of Prato.

Where to buy: Caffé Vittoria

Since biscotti goes hand in hand with coffee, you should buy your biscotti for dunking at Boston’s very first Italian café, established in 1929, Caffé Vittoria—a Best of Boston winner in past coffee shop and tiramisu categories. From the almond anisette to the chocolate-covered and butter cookie versions of biscotti, you can’t go wrong.

290-296 Hanover St., North End, Boston, 617-227-7606, caffevittoria.com.

Making torrone in Cremona, Italy, 2007. / Photo by Edoardo Fornaciari/Getty Images

Torrone

The origins of the first rectangular nougat bar go to both the Arabs (no wonder torrone is so popular in Sicily) and the Northern Italians―who was first depends on who you ask. But the earliest story of this sweet treat being called a “torrone” dates back to the 1400s wedding in the northern Italian city of Cremona for the duke of Milan’s daughter. The nougat’s rectangular shape and name represents the town’s Torrazzo tower where the ceremony was held and is reenacted every year during Cremona’s annual Christmas festival, while torrone is still traditionally handed out to influential people all over at the end of a yuletide meal.

Where to buy: Micucci’s Grocery

I ate my first torrone when I was five years old in the 1980s. After my parents moved up from Brookline to Maine, my dad discovered a tiny Italian grocer here and befriended the owner, Iris Micucci. Her son would chat up my dad, handing him fontinella, Genoa salami, and pecorino romano cheese from behind the stable door to the storage room (when Micucci’s was an actual hole in the wall). Mrs. Micucci would come out to greet my sisters and I with her little colorful zipper pouches full of Italian cookies, including torrone. When my dad came home after work with a big brown box, we knew he’d been to Miccuci’s and there was torrone coming. Mrs. Miccucci’s son Rick still runs the place, which has been open since 1949. In 2006, when I was 25, her daughter Sherene attended my dad’s funeral. Now, I’m the one who brings home the box with torrone and other goodies from Micucci’s at Christmas.

45 India St., Portland, Maine, 207-775-1854, facebook.com/micuccigrocery.

Struffoli in Naples, Italy. / Photo by Salvatore Laporta/KONTROLAB /LightRocket via Getty Images

Struffoli

I’ve made it once: It’s laborious, and I don’t know how my grandmother did it every Christmas. Leave it to the 17th-century nuns in the covenants of Naples, who made struffoli as an act of charity. This mound of little fried balls doused in honey (in Christianity honey is a sign of love) is said to bring good luck at Christmas to Italian families. Each region of Italy has a different name for it. In Palermo, the hometown of one of my great-grandfathers, it’s struffoli; in Calabria, once home to other great-grandparents, they’re cicirata, from the dialect word ciceri, meaning chickpeas—since that’s what they look like. An older Greek variety of stuffoli was described in the third century BCE by Greek poet Callimachus as “honey tokens” served during the early Olympic Games to honor a baker and Olympic runner who won in 776 BCE.

Where to buy: Bova’s Bakery

It’s another family favorite and not just because it’s been open 24 hours since 1932. Less crowded than its neighboring fan-favorite North End bakeries, Bova’s was my dad’s go-to stop for sheet pan pizza when he would work in Boston for the week. You know a bakery is authentic Italian when they sell struffoli—not many do. This place is an institution.

134 Salem St., North End, Boston, 617-523-5601, bovabakeryboston.net.

Cannoli. / Photo by Westend61/Getty Images

Cannoli

There was nothing better than biting into a perfectly thin, flaky cannolo shell in my nonnie’s kitchen in Marlborough. Eating it without dropping a dollop of smooth, sweet, creamy ricotta filling became an artform. So it was really no surprise to learn that cannoli traces back to the Sicilian province of Caltanissetta where my nonnie’s father emigrated from, to Boston, in 1912. His family had lived in the beautiful tiny ancient hilltop village of Marianopoli, at least since the early 1800s, but it was between 827 and 1091 in the nearby city of Caltanissetta itself where the first cannoli was made by concubines for their prince when the island was under Arab rule. (Sicilians also call cannoli cappelli di turchi, or Turkish hats.) Each May, cannoli are eaten in celebration at the annual Cannolo Festival just outside the capital city of Palermo, where the traditional cannoli were kept in monasteries.

Where to buy: Mike’s Pastry

Not far from where my great-grandfather Mario opened his women’s clothing factories in the North End sits what is arguably Boston’s most legendary Italian bakery, appropriately serving up Italy’s most famous dessert since 1946. Today, the shelves are lined with cannoli filled with all flavors and colors (blueberry, strawberry, amaretto) in a festa of fried pastry decorated with chocolate chips, chopped pistachios, pecans—you name it. It all goes back to an Italian named Michael Mercogliano and the cannoli he perfected after arriving in the North End at age 12, later passing down the bakery to its current owner, his stepson, Angelo Papa.

300 Hanover St., North End, Boston, 617-742-3050, mikespastry.com.

Florentines. / Photo by merc67/Getty Images

Florentines

This lacey cookie loaded with butter and slivered almonds—my mom, whose ancestors are French, added candied orange peel, too—is finished with a layer of dark chocolate. As the story goes, back somewhere in the mid-1600 to 1700s, the French monarchy had their chefs in the Palace of Versailles concoct the recipe as a token of admiration for the famous Medici family of Florence.

Where to buy: Modern Pastry Shop

The North End has plenty of cookie competition, but the florentines made with honey at Modern take the cake. Much like my great-grandfather who started his East Boston bakery after arriving from Gasperina, Calabria, the Picariello family also came from Italy with their recipes in hand (and had owned a pastry shop in Italy, too). Modern Pastry has earned the family, who still runs the place, recognition from the City of Boston, which in 2015 designated that section of Hanover Street “Giovanni Picariello Place” after the original owner the year he passed away.

257 Hanover St., North End, Boston, 617-523-3783, modernpastry.com.