The Grape Jam Biscuits or “Stuffed Celli” are little biscuits filled with jam, a tipical pastry from Teramo area, available everywhere in Abruzzo region.

Locally called “cillarichijene” – in Italian would be: celli ripieni, as in “stuffed birds”, due to one of the many traditional forms of these pastries.

According to local tradition they were offered at weddings, today they are made mainly during the Christmas Holiday Season.

The jam plays a fundamental role in these biscuits: it must be made from grapes – locally so-called “ragnat” or “scrucchiat“: Please, do not ask for translation 😉 – eventually mixed with other homemade jams: best match would be plum and peaches.

And here’s my family classic.

Recipe: Grape Jam Bisciuts (Celli Ripieni)

Ingredients

to make the dough

• 400 g all purpose flour (about 1 lb)
• 1 glass of oil (about 6 oz)
• 1 glass dry white wine (about 6 oz)
• 1+½ tablespoon caster sugar

for stuffing

• 300 g grape jam (about 13 oz)
• 50 g walnuts, chopped
• 50 g chopped dark chocolate
• Zest of 1 orange
• 2 crushed plain biscuits (like digestive)
• 50 g caster sugar to decorate

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C (around 350°F).
2. Let’s start with the dough. In a bowl, put the flour, sugar and with the help of a fork mix in the liquids a little at a time. Knead until you have a uniform dough. Let it rest in the refrigerator for a few hours.
3. The stuffing. In a medium-small saucepan – on medium heat – place the jam (preferably homemade with Montepulciano d’Abruzzo grape), with walnuts, chocolate, orange zest and the biscuits; bring to a light boil and remove from heat.
4. Let it cool and keep the mixture in the fridge in a covered container.
5. Prep 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).
6. 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.
7. Get back the dough and, with a rolling pin, roll out to get a thin pastry sheet to form a rectangle.
8. Place a teaspoon of filling on a piece of dough and close by overlapping.
9. Cut the excess dough and fold the ends towards the center. (Let the air out, otherwise they could open during cooking).
10. Place the biscuits on a baking tray (covered with baking paper) and bake in a preheated ventilated oven at 200 °C until golden…
11. In the meantime, prepare a small bowl with the sugar.
12. As soon as the biscuits come out of the oven, roll the top of each one in the sugar, then let them cool on a wire rack… Time to dig in!

Non ci resta che assaggiare 😉

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