INGREDIENTS for 5 little loaves

– For the dough
500 g soft flour
180 g butter
50 g sugar
75 g grated
parmigiano reggiano parmesan cheese
25 g almond
flour
250 g salted
peanuts
200 g eggs (= 3 large eggs) + 1 egg for brushing
5 g baking powder
6 g salt
1 pinch nutmeg

– For the filling
500 g Tunisian dates, deglet el nour variety (best for “blending together ”)
peel of 3 untreated oranges

METHOD
– Chop the pitted dates and orange peel in a mixer; form a dough and make 5 sausage shapes, about 2 cm wide; roll them in cling film and put them into the fridge.

– Pre-heat the oven to 190 °C.

– Beat the butter and sugar. Add the parmigiano reggiano parmesan cheese, almond flour, salt, nutmeg, the 200 g of beaten eggs, flour sifted with the baking powder and lastly the peanuts, all the time mixing and kneading.

– Divide the dough into 5 parts and, on 5 sheets of oven paper, make 5 long rectangles, about
7 cm wide and just under 1 cm thick.

– Place each “little sausage” of date dough onto a rectangle and aided by the oven paper, close the dough, making little loaves, pressing the air out and sealing the edges well.

– Brush the surface with beaten egg.

– Bake in the oven at 190 °C for 15-20 minutes.

Once they have cooled down, cut them diagonally making slices just over 1 cm thick and, if you wish, toast them for 6-8 minutes at 170 °C like the common Prato biscuits. The butter in the dough, although “foreign” to the traditional Prato biscuit, in this case allows these biscuits to remain crumbly for a long time, even without toasting them; at the same
time, it helps to support the filling.