The day after All Saints Day is All Souls Day: il giorno dei morti. This is  a day to pray, to go to the cemetery and to remember family’s members and friends that passed away. For the children this holiday was a completely different occasion because we would get toys and gifts only on two holidays:  il giorno dei morti and la Befana, the Epiphany. 

On All Souls Day my siblings and I, still in our pajamas, would get up early and run into the formal dining room that my family used for special occasions or special guests, to look for the gift and the trays of goodies that the dead, i morti, had prepared during the night for the children that had been good during the year. The night previous to All Souls Day, we hid all the graters because as a popular dirge sang: I nuotti viennu i muorti e t’a’ arranciulian i peri, which translate ‘at night the dead will come to grate your feet’ and if they had found the grater they would have used it. Soon, as time went by and I resolved the mystery of the dead, I was helping my parents to prepare the trays and pack the gifts for my siblings.

The trays were full of dry fruits, pomegranates, quinces (strangely, we never ate them ), fruits made of marzipan, Martorana, and cookies like Tatu, Pipatelli, Muscardini and what in Palermo are called Mostaccioli and in other parts of Sicily called Ossa di Morto. Muscardini and Mostaccioli required good teeth unless they were made the same day. In the center of each tray, there was the Pupaccena a small statue made of sugar and painted in vivid colors representing legendary figures, usually a knight for the boys and a damsel for the girls. The children would eat their preferred cookies and morsels, and at dinner shared with the grownups, all the delicacies left.

The Muscardini are made with a mixture of flour, sugar, and cinnamon and cut into small pieces; it is the same recipe to make Mostaccioli or “Ossa di Morto” except that the Mostazzuoli Palermo style are aromatized with powdered cloves: also they are cut into a bigger size and shaped into various forms of symbolic Christian figures. Currently, all bakers aromatize the small Muscardini and the Mostaccioli with cinnamon and cloves: it makes the Mostaccioli and the Muscardini more flavorful and both cookies can be made using one recipe. The other variety made in south-western Sicily is made with a mixture of flour, sugar, almond, flavored with a combination of cloves, cinnamon powder and lemon zest; it is baked with a different technique