10 of Campania’s best sweets and pastries

Chances are you’ll see pastiera Napoletana in bakeries all over Campania, not just in Naples. Typically served at Easter, this tart probably started life in a monastery or convent, before becoming a staple in households across the region. It contains flour and eggs along with ricotta and orange water for a beautiful creamy flavour, but it's the pre-cooked wheat grains in the filling that make it unique.

Unlike most of the sweets in Campania – which are baked or fried – raffioli do have some similarities to their namesake ravioli. A raffiolo starts with an oval-shaped piece of sponge cake, which is often filled with apricot jam and then coated in icing. The icing helps to preserve the soft sweet filling within, so they’re often made in big batches around Christmas. Apricot is traditional, but the fillings can vary, from pistachio paste to candied orange and lemon peel.

Migliaccio was, once upon a time, a soft cake baked from millet flour – hence its name (miglio is Italian for millet). These days it tends to be made using cornflour, but the other ingredients are much the same and familiar to anyone who has had a slice of pastiera Napoletana – semolina, ricotta, candied orange and vanilla. The difference is mainly in the texture – whilst pastiera has a chunky, slightly grainy texture, migliaccio is smooth and soft, much like a typical ricotta cake.

Another popular sweet around Advent, susamielli used to be called sesamielli, as they were covered in sesame seeds. These days they tend to be flavoured with traditional Campanese favourites like almond and honey, as well as spices such as cinnamon, pepper and nutmeg. The dough has a pleasant dense chewiness to it, a little like a bagel. You can spot susamielli a mile off – they’re baked into elliptical S-shapes.

These fried sweet dough balls are super easy to make, and though they’re common all over Italy, they do originate in Campania. The traditional dessert looks a little like a croquembouche, but more rustic – a large pile of profiterole-like dough balls that are deep-fried until golden before being glazed in honey. An addictive, moreish treat.

As you may have gathered by now, Campania is a region full of festive treats. Ask most of the locals which sweet represents Christmas best and they’ll probably show you a roccocò – an oven-baked donut made from flour, nuts, dried peel and spices including cinnamon, clove, coriander, star anise and nutmeg. They're almost always eaten after a meal on Christmas day – often dunked into wine first!