Celli Ripieni (Grape Jam Dumplings)

1. 1

   Preheat the oven to 350 F. For the pastry, mix all the ingredients together until you get a smooth, elastic dough. It's a beautifully velvety pastry. Don't over work it; when it comes together nicely just wrap it in some plastic wrap and let it rest while you prepare the filling.

2. 2

   Prepare all the ingredients for the filling, including chopping finely the nuts (a mixture of both almonds and walnuts is nice), crushing the biscuits and grating the citrus rinds (with the simple version of this recipe, I use just lemon rind, but if you're going to add chocolate, for example, orange rind really goes well). Warm the jam in a small saucepan on low heat and add it to all the other ingredients you're using for the filling with, except for the crushed biscuits. The biscuits (some use breadcrumbs) are for adding to the mixture in the case that the jam mixture is too liquid - you want to be able to take spoonfuls of it that don't slide off the spoon.

3. 3

   Roll out the pastry to a few millimetres thick and cut it into squares of about 10cm squared. Place a teaspoonful of the jam mixture into the centre of each pastry square and, first folding over the pastry to create a triangle, bring the two outer corners together to create a horseshoe-type shape, pressing down on the edges to seal them. This is essentially the same technique as for tortellini or Chinese wontons! The pastry tends to shrink when it bakes so make sure you have plenty of pastry (i.e. don't fill them too much!) and that you seal them well.

4. 4

   Arrange them on a cookie sheet, greased and covered with baking paper, and bake until the Celli Ripieni are lightly golden. When they are cool, dust them with icing sugar. Enjoy with a nice little cup of espresso!

* Per serving · 4 servings · Values may vary.