Sfogliatella: La Santa Rosa. 

The origins of the sfogliatella: La Santa Rosa.

A legend suggests that it was created by a nun >400 years ago in the Monastery of St. Rose from Conca dei Marini, on the Amalfi coast 😋❤️

Most of the culinary works of the southern stage, are born from more or less extravagant stories, which arouse the curiosity of many fans, who in addition to appreciating the actual goodness of the product, are passionate about the knowledge of its history and what made it so. Among the most popular desserts we remember the babà, the pastiera, the torta caprese (just to name a few), all sweets that have literally made history of local pastry, establishing themselves more and more firmly in the confectionery gastronomic panorama that we love so much. Today, however, I want to focus our attention on a particularly loved dessert, with a sublime flavor and ancient origins: Santa Rosa.

The Santa Rosa, is a sort of curly sfogliatella, enriched with custard and black cherries, a concentrate of delicacy, taste and goodness to which you hardly remain indifferent. As is often said, even this dessert seems to have been born from an unexpected and above all from genuine ingredients that gave life to the original Santa Rosa, but let's go step by step. It is said that back in 1700, in Conca dei Marini, in the monastery of Santa Rosa, the skilled hands of the nuns used to prepare delicacies and sweets of all kinds. There was a severe autarky in this regard, so everything that was produced, was the result of their own ingredients, processed only and exclusively by them. One day, to be exact on the day dedicated to the preparation of bread, the nun cook, excellent pastry chef, given the leftovers of dough, decided to invent something so as not to run into waste. So she decided to add some surplus ingredients in the pantry, resorting above all to those most produced in the lands that they themselves cultivated, reinvigorates the simple dough of bread with white wine and lard, and prepared the inside with dried fruit, lemon liqueur (or the current limoncello) and sugar. After giving the dough the shape of many small "nun's caps", she put them to cook in a wood oven.

The Mother Superior, at the first bite, was literally bewitched, so much so as to want to share this delight with the peasants, in exchange for a few and symbolic change, and so at the convent, when someone wanted to buy these sweets, to respect the cloister to which the nuns had made a vow, "the wheel" was used (like the one used at the Annunziata to leave children in foster care). They decided to give the name of the cake "Santa Rosa" (some also call it "monachina") just like the saint whose convent bore the name, and on the occasion of her feast, at the time it occurred on August 30th (today it is celebrated on the 23rd of the same month), the Santa Rosa were offered to all the inhabitants of Conca dei Marini.

The recipe remained secret for many years, but it was at the beginning of the nineteenth century, that the Neapolitan Pasquale Pintauro, owner of a tavern in Via Toledo in Naples, managed to get the recipe, perhaps thanks to the help of an aunt nun. Pintauro, passionate about sweets, transformed his tavern into a laboratory and to make the confectionery sale more fluent, he added some small tweaks to the ingredients to get closer to the taste needs of the time. It was Pintauro in fact to give life, not only to what is today the appetizing sfogliatella, but also the modern Santa Rosa, enriched with custard and black cherries.

Let's see together how Santa Rosa is prepared, according to what is the "modern" recipe proposed by the portal sfogliatella.it

Ingredients for the pastry

800 g flour

300 g butter

a pinch of salt

Ingredients for the filling

300 g custard

200 g black cherry jam

2 egg yolks

*powdered sugar for garnish

Procedure

Prepare the puff pastry with flour, butter and a pinch of salt, working the dough vigorously. Let it rest. Roll out the dough with the help of a rolling pin and then with the help of a pasta cutter, obtain many small rounds with a diameter of about 10 cm. Place the custard and a few black cherries on half of the puff pastry disk, then close the ends sealing with a little egg and brush the entire surface with egg yolks.

Bake in a hot oven for 30 minutes at about 160/180 degrees, and once cooked let cool. Before serving, with the help of a pastry bag, add a little more cream and some black cherries and then sprinkle with icing sugar.