APULICA / FRESH PASTA, BREAD AND PASTRY

Scarcelle (Easter biscuits)

PAT · Fresh pasta, bread and pastry · Puglia

Apulica editorial team · Sources checked: 2026-10-12

In brief

A baked sweet of flour, sugar, oil and eggs, shaped in various forms with a hard-boiled egg set into the dough. (Atlante dei PAT di Puglia — Scarcelle)
The oldest shape is the ring, and the name itself means ring cake. (Atlante dei PAT di Puglia — Scarcelle)
It is made during Holy Week or the week before. (Atlante dei PAT di Puglia — Scarcelle)

History and origin

The scarcella is the sweet of the Apulian Easter. Its very name points to its oldest shape: "scarcella" means ring cake, and the original form of the sweet is indeed a wheel. The regional record of traditional products notes that the round shape has roots in a very distant past and is associated with good fortune.

The sweet is full of symbols. The hard-boiled eggs set into the dough stand for the birth of new life; tradition also reads into it liberation from original sin, because to eat the scarcella the eggs must be "scarcerate", freed from the twist of dough that holds them.

A popular rhyme in dialect tells of the children's waiting: "Pasque, Pasque, viine cherrenne… scarcedde che ll'ove!", meaning Easter, come soon, the children beg with all their heart for scarcelle with eggs. The scarcella has been on the national list of traditional food products since 2001, with the whole region as its area of origin.

Sources: Atlante dei PAT di Puglia — Scarcelle · Masaf — Elenco nazionale dei prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali, XXVI revisione (2026)

Area and method of production

The scarcella is made throughout Puglia during Holy Week or the week before. The dough described by the regional record is that of a sweet biscuit: flour, sugar, oil, eggs and baking powder. It is worked until elastic and left to rest for about half an hour.

The desired shapes are then formed, and a hard-boiled egg is set into each one, held in place by strips or twists of dough. The surface is brushed with beaten egg and decorated with sugar sprinkles or coloured hundreds-and-thousands.

Baking takes place at about 180 degrees for 40-45 minutes. The regional record recalls that in the days of Easter the scent of scarcelle filled, and still fills, homes and streets. They are sold in traditional and specialist shops and directly by the bakeries that make them.

Sources: Atlante dei PAT di Puglia — Scarcelle

How to recognise it

The scarcella is instantly recognisable by the whole hard-boiled egg set into the dough. The shapes are many: besides the ring, the oldest, there are baskets, doves, bunnies and braids, each with its egg in the middle.

The surface may be decorated with sugar sprinkles and coloured hundreds-and-thousands, or covered with a sugar glaze. Beneath the decoration is the dough of a sweet biscuit made with oil, eggs and sugar, baked in the oven.

It is the eggs, and the act of freeing them from the dough to eat them, that give the sweet the meanings tradition attaches to it: life being born and liberation from sin. It is a seasonal sweet, tied to the days before Easter.

Sources: Atlante dei PAT di Puglia — Scarcelle

Where to taste it

The scarcella's area of origin is the whole of Puglia: it is a family sweet found throughout the region in the Easter weeks, in homes, bakeries and pastry shops. The time to look for it is Holy Week and the week before, when making it goes hand in hand with the Easter rites.

The regional record also recalls a festival devoted to it: the Sagra della scarcella e dei dolci pasquali in Statte, a town in the province of Taranto, held in the past for more than twenty editions.

For travellers in Puglia in spring, the scarcella is a way to share in the local Easter: it is found in traditional and specialist shops and at the bakeries that make it, in its many shapes, from the ring to the dove.

Sources: Atlante dei PAT di Puglia — Scarcelle