Sweet routes – Itinerary of Taste

Pio IX cake

Our journey through the typical sweets of the Val Mivola begins in Senigallia with a dessert dedicated to none other than the Pope of Senigallia Pius IX, the last Pope King.

The original recipe, of Spanish origin, is a sweet pastry shaped like a papa hat, a soft rolled cake.

The filling can be with sweet de leche, jams, creams and fresh fruit.

Fig loin

Once in Serra de’Conti you can not taste the fig lonzino. Ancient sweet, of which the Latin writer Columella speaks already in 65 A.D. The name of lonzino comes from its shape, similar to the pork loin. The ingredients and the method of preparation have remained unchanged over the centuries.

Figs are dottati or brogiotti, dried and mixed with other ingredients of the rural tradition: almonds, small pieces of walnut and star anise seeds.

Sometimes mixed with a little sapa (long-boiled grape must) or mixed (liqueur obtained by maceration of anise fruits in alcohol) and then wrapped in fig leaves.  Golden brown, compact and solid, the lonzino, cut into slices not too thin, looks like a fine dough.

The nose immediately feels the ripe fruit with an enveloping note of anise. If served with sapa (grape must), its overall sweetness with hints of caramel stands out.

It is excellent with a soft cheese, of medium seasoning and a glass of sweet wine.

Calcioni

Arcevia and its castles offer a rich sample of tasty sweets.

It starts from the calcions, of very ancient origin, with the characteristic sweet and salty taste given by the presence of both sugar and pecorino cheese.

Calcione is a disc of puff pastry, flavored with grated lemon peel that can be served both as an appetizer and as a dessert.

Frittellone

Also noteworthy is the frittellone, autumn sweet of peasant origin.

It’s made up of octopus corn flour, sugar, raisins, quinces, sapa, extra virgin olive oil, honey, nuts and aniseed liqueur.

Castagnole boiled

To finish the boiled castagnole, sweet carnival of flour, eggs, sugar, anise liqueur or mixed.

Their peculiarity lies in the fact that the dough is first boiled in water and finally fried in lard.

Maiorchino

In the area of Ostra Vetere is prepared a typical dessert dating back to the early 900, the Majorcan.

Its origin is linked to a mistake of the doses during the preparation of the pizza margherita that helped to give it the current crushed and elongated shape.

The main ingredients are flour, almond grains, eggs and sugar.

Pecorelle

The traditional sweets of Corinaldo are the sheep. According to tradition, these cookies are a dessert of the Christmas period: the “sheep” were cooked the day before the epiphany and were then used to decorate the “palm of the Epiphany”.

For the occasion in fact in the houses of Corinaldo, appeared a large laurel branch that was decorated with candies, chocolates, oranges and tangerines and of course the “sheep”.

The name of the filled biscuits prepared for the holiday comes from their shape: the classic one is slightly crescent-shaped and with the characteristic spicing on the surface.

There is not a single recipe of the “sheep”, but many versions that the families corinaldesi carefully guard to recreate a beautiful traditional dessert, made of simple ingredients. The biscuit in fact consists of a sheet of flour, oil, sugar and white wine that contains a filling rich in taste and scents composed of must, breadcrumbs, nuts, orange peel and cinnamon.

Honey from Castelleone di Suasa

Beekeeping is quite common in Val Mivola and produces honey of excellent quality especially in the area of Castelleone di Suasa.

The varied botanical composition of the countryside and the seasonal trend affect especially the bouquet of aromas of millefiori but there are also single-flower productions, that is linked to a single variety of flowers, such as clover, sulla and sunflower.

honey from Colza

Senigallia is the production area of a type of honey rare in Italy: rapeseed honey.

This plant is particularly rich in pollen and therefore protein.