Cassata Siciliana appears as a signature dish in 1 Italy cities. See each city's local variant and where to eat it.
Cassata Siciliana · Palermo
Cassata is the Sicilian sponge cake encased in green marzipan and ricotta cream, topped with candied fruit and pan di Spagna sponge, the convent-tradition crown jewel of Palermitan pasticceria.
Cassata's name traces to the Arabic 'qas'at' (a deep round dish); its modern form emerged from the Spanish Habsburg court of 16th-century Palermo when Genoese sugar refineries supplied the marzipan. The convent of Santa Caterina d'Alessandria in Palermo refined the recipe; cassata became Easter's defining Sicilian pastry and remains so.
Where to eat in Palermo:
- I Segreti del Chiostro
- Pasticceria Cappello
- Antico Caffe Spinnato