The Nuns’ Breasts are typical Apulian sweets from Altamura, soft and very light, to be filled with pastry cream or Chantilly. A spectacular and irresistible dessert.
To prepare the recipe for Nuns’ Breasts (Apulian sweets from Altamura), as far as I know you must mandatorily use the flour called MIX AFRICANO which I bought online on Amazon.
The Mix Africano package I used weighs 450 grams but I didn’t feel like filling myself with sweets (who eats them all?) so I made a half batch: 5 eggs and 225 grams of this flour mix.
The Mix Africano is used to prepare Nuns’ Breasts, africanetti and to make ladyfingers and they came out for the whole building!!
With the other part of the MIX AFRICANO I’ll try to make the africanetti
(if I can find a recipe using the Mix Africano) which are little bars that literally melt in your mouth, sweets I know VERY well!
In my previous married life, we used to eat the africanetti when with friends we went to an osteria in San Giovanni in Persiceto and after stuffing ourselves with tigelle, cold cuts and excellent wines, the father of the then owner would bring us these amazing sweets! HOW I WOULD GO BACKOOOOOOOOOOOOO….
The Nuns’ Breasts are very soft, fluffy sweets that must be filled because for me the mix is very delicate and we must make it sublime with cream which can be Chantilly, pastry cream, or whatever sweet filling you prefer!
The Nuns’ Breasts are prepared with this powder mix that contains gluten, starch, powdered sugar, leavening, vanilla and stabilizers to maintain extreme softness in the final result.
To make the Nuns’ Breasts I deliberately did not use paper cups to pipe the batter from the piping bag and indeed some little piles of pseudo-breasts are lopsided and we even have an intruder…the little bird
the colombina of the nuns!
I like to work simply and experimentally: I don’t have a pastry shop, my blog is what you can also do at home with successes and with odd things that pop out of the oven and I have no intention of changing, I’m old now!
Anyway, use a muffin tin or paper cups if you want to obtain a straight, pointed little cake!
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- Difficulty: Medium
- Cost: Medium
- Rest time: 30 Minutes
- Preparation time: 10 Minutes
- Cooking time: 15 Minutes
- Portions: 18 pieces
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Regional Italian
- Region: Apulia
- Seasonality: All seasons
INGREDIENTS
- 5 eggs (medium)
- 1 7/8 cups flour (MIX AFRICANO for nuns' breasts, ladyfingers, africanetti)
- to taste powdered sugar (for decoration)
- to taste heavy whipping cream (35% fat — or pastry cream or any sweet filling of your choice)
TOOLS
- Baking pans
- Parchment paper
- Piping bags
- Stand mixers
FOR THE PREPARATION OF THE NUNS’ BREASTS RECIPE
It’s rather simple: just put the eggs and the ready-made MIX AFRICANO mix and beat with the whisk for 5 minutes at maximum speed… and you’ll get the batter you see below!
The oven is preheated to 356°F and I put this soft but fairly dense mass into a piping bag without a nozzle — at least that’s how I did it!
I then cut the tip to about 1 cm (about 3/8 inch), actually a little more, and made these little spikes on the parchment paper without greasing it or anything, just as it comes in the package!
I bake them and wait about 15 minutes… I confess I set the oven to 338°F at first because it’s a new oven, a new recipe and I wanted to check the cooking carefully.
After about 10 minutes the Nuns’ Breasts were just starting to color, so I raised the temperature to 356°F to get them nicely golden and baked; I waited another 7/8 minutes or so, so… pay attention!
Once baked, I suggest you open one to check and then I let them cool completely… I left the baking sheet in the oven with the door slightly open but do as you prefer!
In the meantime I whipped the cream, took a long narrow nozzle and, when the nuns’ breasts were cold, I filled them and then tasted them….
Enjoy the special Nuns’ Breasts from Apulia — actually from Altamura!
Annalisa
P.S. On some blogs I read that you must use only one type of Mix Africano but I didn’t use the one they indicate and it seems to me that the result is pretty good!
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