Rossi Pastry Shop

“We Specialize in Cakes for All Occasions, Cookie Trays, and Miniature and Large Pastry. All Baking Done on Premises.”

Our friend Robert had a summer job at Rossi Pastry Shop on East Gun Hill Road at the corner of Fenton Avenue. When he walked home at the end of the day, we could see him coming while he was still halfway down the block as his white work clothes reflected the streetlights and gave him a conspicuous glow. As he got closer, though, we could smell him coming. Robert seemed to be bringing the whole bakery with him. Over the course the day, as he worked at the hot ovens, every fiber of his being had become infused with the essence of his baked creations, and now the summer breeze served it up to us.

For many bakeries, it’s the scent of their specialty breads that captivates all within smelling distance. For Rossi’s, it was the aroma of their cookies—Italian cookies.

Supermarkets carry cookie assortments that look much like authentic Italian cookies. Stacked in plastic boxes, decorated with colorful sprinkles, and bursting with jam, they look like a true bakery cookie, but one taste leaves no doubt that that is where the similarity ends. Italian bakeries use only first-quality ingredients, including fresh butter, fine chocolate, scratch-made jams, and pure extracts. Factories that mass produce the inexpensive lookalikes bake with shortening and other butter substitutes, imitation extracts, and chemical additives.

Dipped, drizzled, dusted, sandwiched, or sprinkled: the butter cookie varieties

Although the butter cookies start with the same dough, the final embellishments impart variety in flavor as well as in appearance. Piping the dough through a pastry bag fitted with a star tip creates decorative ridges on the plank-shaped cookies, while round cookies and rosettes emerge from the pastry bag in wavy swirls.

A typical assortment from Rossi’s included plank-shaped sandwich cookies filled with raspberry jam and dusted with powdered sugar, or half-dipped in chocolate and spattered with minced nuts or rainbow sprinkles. Round cookies could be topped with chocolate chips, chocolate or rainbow sprinkles, a glace cherry, or a zigzagged drizzle of chocolate.

Sold by the pound and placed with care into paper-lined bakery boxes, or mounded onto cellophane-wrapped trays, an assortment included all the butter cookie varieties as well as one or two of the more expensive types—chocolate-lace Florentines and the almond-based Venetians (rainbow cookies), chewy pignoli cookies, and cherry-topped macaroons.

As a gift to take to special visits, whether as a dinner guest or to see a recuperating friend, a box of Rossi’s cookies presented a welcome alternative to the more customary Italian pastries. But a tray heaped with cookies and adorned with candy-coated almonds in pastel colors became the centerpiece of the table at holiday gatherings, funeral luncheons, or family parties.

Birthday Cakes

Thick ruffles of white buttercream frosting circled the top of these round cakes, and peanut shards clung to the frosted sides. A cluster of thick roses of pink, blue, or yellow frosting shared space with the birthday message on top. Cutting through the dense layer of buttercream into the cake below required a long, sharp knife; sliding out the first piece required a heavy-duty spatula. The withdrawn wedge revealed two layers of yellow cake separated with either more buttercream or a fruit spread, typically lemon or strawberry. A certain flavor in the cake—rum, I eventually learned—seemed to be a real crowd pleaser. You could almost taste it before the fork entered your mouth, simply by its smell. The richness of the heavy frosting and the taste of the rum and the strange combination of peanuts with frosting made me dread these ornate creations, especially when the cake was for my own birthday.

Summer’s Signature

As kids we ran to Vinnie’s candy store on Eastchester Road at least once a day. Rossi’s was a half-mile away in another neighborhood, but Rossi’s had what Vinnie’s did not: Italian ices. Since we only got there once or twice a summer, a lemon ice from Rossi Pastry Shop was a special treat.

A soft white mound in a pleated paper cup, the lemon ice had a smooth, creamy consistency, with no annoying bits of lemon zest as other Italian ices had. Frosty sweetness, combined with the tang of lemon, created the best kind of brain freeze on the hottest summer day.

No one wanted to rush through summer’s rarest treat, but lingering too long turned the ice to lemonade and the cup to a pulpy, leaking wad. A quick slurp took care of the little puddle before it could all drip away. All that was left was a summer memory and a coat of stickiness that clung to mouth, hands, knees, sneakers, shorts, and top.

© Barbara Cole 2021. All Rights Reserved.

Pignoli Cookies

7-8 oz. almond paste

3/4 cup confectioner’s sugar

1 egg white

1/3 cup pignoli nuts

Preheat oven to 350°. Line cookie sheet(s) with parchment paper.

Break the almond paste into small bits. With electric mixer on low speed, mix together the almond paste and sugar. Add the egg white and mix for 2 minutes on medium speed.

With wet hands (to manage the sticky dough), roll the dough into 1-inch balls, then roll the balls into a shallow bowl of pine nuts. Place the balls onto the prepared cookie sheets, 1˗2 inches apart. Flatten the tops slightly.

Bake 15˗20 minutes until light golden brown.

Leave cookies on the parchment paper to cool.

Makes 18˗20 cookies.