Sweet Decadence in Sicily

he Bar Duomo in Cefalù glows at night, displaying mounds of desserts on tinted green glass shelves. Our American tour group had arrived in Sicily only hours before and we could hardly summon enough energy to gawk at the sweet shop. As our guide described the ingredients in each confection—honey, vanilla, chocolate, nuts—someone said, "Oh, look at that sponge cake there." It was too much. Jet lag gave way to sugar cravings.

No one with even a mild sweet tooth is immune to it. Tourists search for the perfect cannoli and locals line up for almond cookies. Sicilian women in the smallest town will squeeze themselves into heels, don their sexiest outfit and then crowd into a corner café to choose a creamy cone of gelato. In Cefalù the locals descend en masse upon the town square at night to satiate their cravings for something sweet. Entire families gather in circles and chat between bites. No one is left out. On a cool March evening, a Sicilian woman sits on a bench spoon-feeding strawberry gelato to her large dog.

Many invaders swept through Sicily over time, beginning with the Romans in 211 BC. Each new wave of invaders brought their desserts with them. Sicilians now serve up sugary morsels that vary from town to town, from marzipan shapes to flaky pastries filled with cream. The blood oranges that grow in groves all over the island taste different at each stop. Store shelves are packed with several honey varieties. In Sicily, "la dolce vita" is the reality.

Sicily is often credited as the birthplace of gelato, and while this may not be entirely true, at the very least the island contributed immensely to its development. In the 18th century, locals commonly took snow from Mount Etna and mixed it with cream, egg whites and powdered sugar, a variation on a Chinese recipe. Sicilian-born Francesco Procopio is said to have introduced ice cream to Paris when he opened his café in 1686. While Elizabeth David, the author of "Harvest of the Cold Months: A history of ice and ices," calls it an exaggerated myth, she does credit his Café Procope as "a true innovation" that later popularized frozen desserts and drinks. The café still exists today.

Nothing compares to Sicilian gelato. It's easy to walk with a cone of gelato, melty and creamy but surprisingly light. Unlike ice cream found elsewhere, gelato tends to sit more comfortably in the stomach after a large meal. The flavor choices are almost overwhelming: coconut, chocolate and hazelnut ripple, stracciatelli or chocolate flakes in a vanilla swirl, strawberry, lemon and pistachio.

Sicilians tend to line up at little gelaterias or pastry shops in the late afternoon. The seaside town of Cefalù is no exception. As the warm spring day turned to dusk, our American group joined the line at the Bar Duomo, pointing to the treats we wanted. We watched local police officers park their car right in front of the shop and shake hands with one of the workers. The verdict? "Molto bene!" an officer exclaimed as he bit into his pastry. Some things need no translation.

Sweets also play an important role in Italian festivals and religious celebrations. March 19 is Saint Joseph's Day, celebrated with a big feast in tribute to St. Joseph, Italians' patron saint. In many villages, especially Sicilian ones, locals invite strangers into their homes. Villagers share food with the poor and people representing the holy family are the guests of honor.

Residents of the town of Salemi, for example, decorate their churches and homes with elaborate bread sculptures. The streets smell like the fragrant lemon and bay leaves left behind from a morning procession. In the window of a sporting goods store, bread sculptures hang next to soccer balls. Bakeries display sfinci di San Giuseppe, a pastry flavored, and often topped with, orange peel. On a narrow side street, locals invite strangers into their homes and feed them—what else?—pastries and bread.

At the house we visited, the group inside helped an elderly man through the door and handed him a basket of bread. They gave me a light pastry containing a creamy ricotta filling. While I was standing outside waiting for everyone in our group to file in and out of the house, a man stepped towards me. Thinking I didn't get enough to eat, he led me back inside and handed me a chocolate cream-filled pastry. It was an offer I couldn't refuse.

In AD 827, the Saracens—a combination of Arabs, Berbers and Spanish Muslims—invaded the island, bringing with them an adoration of sweets, especially desserts made from almonds and honey. The word for almond paste, marzipan, comes from the Arabic word martabãn and in Sicily, marzipan candy can be found in every shape imaginable. Shops display baskets of colorful candy, shiny in its plastic protection, shaped like prickly pears, fruits, vegetables, and even penises.

In the mountainous regions of Sicily's eastern coast you can look down into a valley and instantly spot beehives clustered together. Honey here tastes strong-less like sugar and more like a flower. Any sweet shop worth its name sells jars of miele: miele d'arancia, miele de millefiori and marmalada. The grocery stores sell bags of hard honey candies that contain liquid honey in the center.

Besides, honey from the top of a volcano? Clearly it wasn't made there!

Even when you're at the top of Mount Etna, Europe's largest volcano, you can't escape Sicilian sweets. Our tour group passed a honey vendor on our way to the craters. I glanced over and resisted the urge to stop, determined to save my lira. Besides, honey from the top of a volcano? Clearly it wasn't made there! Then the man offered me a sample on a small plastic spoon. First it was a taste of apricot honey, then some strawberry, next came honey with almonds. Finally I savored a pistachio cream. Other tourists got sucked in, too.

"We're going to gain five pounds if we keep talking to you," I told the vendor, but we all bought jars.

You can even find tempting treats tucked away in the mountains of Sicily. The town of Erice requires a difficult drive along hairpin turns into high altitudes. At dusk the fog rolls in and pasticcerias grow busy with locals and tourists eager for dolci. Our guide mentioned a local woman famous for her almond cookie shop. I set out to find it, speed walking up the charley horse-inducing streets.

At the first pasticceria that looked right, I walked in and was immediately drawn to the glowing glass case brimming with neatly arranged cookies. Free samples of nougat flowed, workers were busy filling orders and packing boxes of almond treats for tourists, and two locals were enjoying their genoveses. I bit into one luxurious dolcetti al liquore after another. Other people from my group caught up and soon everyone had one dessert in their stomach and another in their hand. Then a latecomer told us we weren't even in the famous cookie lady's store. We had walked right by it. I looked at the sign on the way out—we had been at Il Tulipano.

Maria Grammatico, co-author of the English book "Bitter Almonds: Recollections & Recipes from a Sicilian Girlhood," learned to craft marzipan in a convent as a young girl. When asked what particular dessert in her store is famous, she simply replied "tutto." Despite full stomachs from Il Tulipano, we weren't about to refuse the samples of emerald green marsala Maria herself began to hand around. The minty, spicy liqueur was one of many multicolored bottles lining the shelves behind the counter.

The real source of Grammatico's fame comes from her almond creations: crunchy almond cookies, rum-filled marzipan balls, chocolate—covered almond paste, nougat, and orange—flavored marzipan. A plaque on the wall testifies to Dolceria Maria's importance. In 1988 the store was credited with the "primo progresso Sicilia" for "laboratoria pasticceria."
By the time we returned to the bus in the last light of day, both stores had profited from our business. Between the free samples and the real purchases, we all stumbled back to our seats feeling a sugar high bordering on a buzz.

The problem with the delectable sweets in Sicily is that you actually have to save room for them after a long dinner. Many restaurants offer some kind of fruit at the end of a long meal, usually an orange, and leave more serious desserts to local bakeries or cafés. Sicilian oranges are radically different from oranges back in the states. In Cefalù the small oranges are so juicy that you have to hold them over a glass when you peel them. Orange groves cover the hillsides of Sicily, so thick that sometimes you can't tell where one tree ends and another begins.

Blood oranges are a metaphor for Sicily: unexpectedly sweet inside...

Maybe it was because he saw a large group of American women coming, but an orange vendor outside the Piazza Armerina Mosaics began slicing pieces of an enormous blood orange and handing them to us as we filed by on our way to see the mosaics. The fruit was deep maroon inside and tasted sweeter than any blood orange I had tried up until that point. Blood oranges are surprises: at first you aren't quite sure that the inside is really going to be red. And then you bite into it, marveling at how the fruit seems to be alive. Blood oranges are a metaphor for Sicily: unexpectedly sweet inside.

If a restaurant is serving more for dessert than oranges or tangy limoncello liquore, it will certainly serve up cannoli. The name means "pipes" and traditionally the dessert is made with a fried shell, stuffed with ricotta filling and topped with powdered sugar. At a restaurant in Taormina specializing in fish, the waiter came out to our street-side table and said, "The chef is going to make fresh cannoli, how many do you want?" We all looked at each other and smiled.

"Once father ate five after lunch and everyone was waiting for his death," said Giovanne Tornabene, author of "La Cucina Siciliana di Gangivecchio." After tasting the cannoli recipe from Tornabene's family, it's easy to see why. Their dessert is rich and creamy, made from ricotta cheese produced at the Gangivecchio estate, once a Roman outpost and later a 14th century Benedictine abbey. Tornabene and her mother, Wanda, now run a restaurant there, making everything themselves except the wine.

Giovanne's grandmother used to leave cannoli for her father next to his bed so he could have a snack before drifting off. This recipe differs from other cannoli recipes. The secret? Vinegar, lard and ricotta cheese found in only one place in the world. Wanda makes the shell with flour, sugar, lard, and replaces wine with vinegar. She mixes the dough, rolls it and cuts it into coffee dish-sized circles. The circles are coated with egg whites and then fried in melted lard instead of olive oil, which Giovanne says makes them taste lighter. Although the ricotta can be emulated, it can't be reproduced outside of Gangivecchio. "It's the grass," Giovanne said. I've never had a cannoli quite like the one I ate at that estate.

Cannoli at Gangivecchio shares the menu with sofficini con crema pasticcera, fried raviolis filled with lemony cream and dusted with powdered sugar, but cannoli is still the pièce de résistance. It's the last edible before the rounds of digestifs. The waiter came around with a large plate of cannoli and served them with long, silver tongs. Rearranging my cloth napkin, I squirmed like a little kid in my chair. If I had a dog, it might have been lucky enough to get a taste.