Italian Cenci Cookies — The Week I Made Something Thin and Sweet and Meant to Last

Mamma called Tuesday morning at 10 AM, as she always does, as she has done since she had a phone of her own in 1953. She wanted to know what I was making for dinner. The question matters to her in a way that I now understand at sixty-eight in a way I did not understand at thirty. The asking is the love. The answering is the love. The conversation is the bridge across the days. We talked for nineteen minutes. Mamma is ninety. The phone calls are precious and finite. I do not waste them. Anna sent photos from Minneapolis — the kids in their school uniforms, David's new bookshelf, the dog (their dog, not mine; their dog is named Cooper, and Cooper is a Bernese mountain dog who weighs more than Anna and who is, by all accounts, the most relaxed dog in the upper Midwest). I printed three of the photos and put them on the fridge. The fridge holds the family that is not currently in the kitchen. Elsa called from Voyageurs. She had a sighting of a wolf — a single gray adult crossing a frozen bay at dawn, fifty yards from her cabin. She had a sighting of a moose two days later. She is happy in the woods. I am glad someone in this family is happy in the woods. I have always loved Lake Superior, but the deeper woods are not for me. Elsa is for the deeper woods. The match is right. I cooked Pepparkakor this week. Thin gingersnaps with the secret pepper. Three dozen. Damiano Center, Thursday. New volunteer this week — a young woman named Sara, just out of college, looking lost and brave. I showed her how to ladle. She caught on quickly. She asked me how long I had been doing this. I said: "Long enough that I do not count." She laughed. She will be back. The good ones come back. Paul's chair is at the head of the table. His glasses are on the shelf. The arrangement is permanent. The arrangement is the love. The arrangement has been remarked on, gently, by various people over the years — Anna, mostly, and well-meaning friends. The arrangement persists. I do not require justification for it. The chair is the chair. It is enough. It has to be. And on a morning like this, with the lake doing what the lake does and the dog at my feet and the bread on the counter and the kitchen warm enough to live in, it is. I have started, in the last few years, to think about what I will leave behind. Not in a morbid way. In a practical way. The recipes are written down. The notebook is on the counter. The kitchen is in good order. The house is in Anna's name (we did the legal work in 2032; the kids agreed; it was the practical thing). The grandchildren and great-grandchildren each have a few small specific things — a wooden spoon, a bread pan, a particular cast iron skillet — that I have already labeled with their names on small pieces of masking tape. Nobody knows about the masking tape labels. They will find them when they find them. Paul used to say that the difference between a place and a home was that a home was a place where you knew, from any room, what was happening in any other room. I knew, from the kitchen, when he was reading in the living room. I knew, from the bedroom, when he was getting coffee in the kitchen. The Kenwood house is still that kind of home. From the kitchen I know that Sven is asleep on his bed in the dining room (the small specific snore). From the kitchen I know what time the radio in the living room is set to come on. The home is the body of knowledge of itself. I still live inside that body of knowledge, even though Paul is not the one creating most of the data anymore. It is enough.

The Pepparkakor were already cooling on the rack when I pulled out the notebook and found this one folded into the back pages — a recipe I had not made in some years, but one that belongs to the same kind of week: a week of phone calls worth counting, of photos on the fridge, of a kitchen that feels both full and quiet at once. Cenci are thin and brittle and sweet in a restrained way, and you make them in a quantity that feels slightly unreasonable until people start taking them, and then the quantity feels exactly right. I made them for no occasion. That is the occasion.

Italian Cenci Cookies

Prep Time: 30 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Total Time: 55 min (plus 30 min dough rest) | Servings: 28–32 cookies

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon fine salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 2 tablespoons dry white wine or grappa
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
• Vegetable oil or light olive oil, for frying (about 3 cups)
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar, for dusting

Instructions

1. Make the dough. Whisk together the flour, granulated sugar, salt, and baking powder in a large bowl. Make a well in the center and add the eggs, softened butter, wine, vanilla, and lemon zest. Work the mixture together with a fork, then turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 4 minutes. The dough should feel silky and not sticky.
2. Rest the dough. Wrap the dough tightly in plastic wrap and let it rest at room temperature for 30 minutes. This relaxes the gluten and makes rolling much easier.
3. Roll and cut. Divide the dough into 4 portions. Working one portion at a time (keep the rest covered), roll on a lightly floured surface as thin as you can — about 1/16 inch, nearly translucent. Cut into rectangles roughly 4 by 2 inches. Cut a small slit, about 1 inch long, down the center of each rectangle. Tuck one end through the slit and pull gently to create a loose twist. Set on a floured baking sheet while you work.
4. Heat the oil. Pour oil into a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan or wide skillet to a depth of about 1 1/2 inches. Heat over medium to 350°F. If you do not have a thermometer, test with a small scrap of dough — it should sizzle and rise to the surface within 3 seconds.
5. Fry in batches. Add 5 or 6 cenci at a time, taking care not to crowd them. Fry, turning once with a slotted spoon or spider, until pale golden and just crisp, about 1 to 1 1/2 minutes per side. They color quickly, so watch closely. Transfer to a baking sheet lined with paper towels.
6. Dust and serve. While still warm, sift powdered sugar generously over the cenci. They may be stacked loosely once cool. Serve the same day for best crispness, though they keep in an open tin for 2 days.

Nutrition (per serving, 2 cookies)

Calories: 95 | Protein: 2g | Fat: 4g | Carbs: 13g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 35mg