HOME & FOOD
A family
affair
Story by kATie mCdowell | Photograph by JoN goeriNg
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aking is a right of passage for the Monella and Berry families. Family members learn to make Cuccidati — Italian fig cookies — at an early age. They start with the icing, by far the easiest job, and graduate to stuffing and rolling the cookies or manning the oven. “When you first get exposed to the cookies, it’s the decorating. I can remember clouds of powdered sugar and sprinkles,” said Marc Berry, who lives in Alabaster with his wife, Zabrina, and their two teenage sons. Marc’s mother, Antoinette Berry, and her sister, Ruth Monella, who both live in Birmingham, are now responsible for teaching family members how to make the cookies. “We’ve been making these since we were old enough to reach the table,” Antoinette said. The recipe is their great-aunt’s and is known for being the most difficult and time-consuming of the family recipes. The challenge comes from both the size of the recipe, which calls for 7 pounds of flour and 15 pounds of figs – and for the tedious filling and rolling. On a Wednesday afternoon in April, the family divided into stations with Ruth using a handmade rolling pin to flatten the dough, Antoinette and Zabrina filling and rolling the cookies and Marc manning the oven. The fig filling also includes fruitcake mix, pecans, spices, honey, orange marmalade and chocolate chips. The women spoon the filling out of a bowl and carefully spread a large scoop of it across each piece of dough. Marc once tried to find a shortcut by using a pastry bag for the filling, but it 58 | ShelbyLiving.com
was too thick and stuck to the bag. “We’ve tried to modernize the cookies for the last 10 years, and this is the only way it will work, the same way that my grandma used to do it,” he said. Ruth and Antoinette, whose father immigrated to America from Sicily in his teens, have found a few ways to quicken the process. Ruth remembers her mother and grandmother carefully
painting each cookie with icing, but she simply drizzles the cookies before topping them with red and green sprinkles to honor Italy’s colors. While the recipe is a difficult one, it’s one the family cherishes and makes around the holidays. “There are about four or five (recipes) we stick to,” Antoinette said. “Cooking is like a religion.” l