TASTEOFHOME.COM OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2019 77
Heart of CookingBaked by Hear t
For the Cappuccio family, Mom’s cinnamon twirl cookies were an icon—
and a mystery. Now she shares the recipe for the first time.
STORY BY JEANNE SIDNERR
AFFAELLA “PHYLLIS”
CAPPUCCIO’S FAMILY GREW
UP ON HER CINNAMON
TWIRL COOKIES, but having
never made them, the family
had no clue how the cookies
got their magic. The matriarch of this big
Boston-area brood has served the slightly crispy,
not-too-sweet bites by the
dozens for decades, using
a recipe that lived only
in her head and prepared
only by her hands.
“My mom makes huge
batches,” says daughter
Linda Doherty. “As we
grew up, they were on our
table like other people
had Chips Ahoy.”
Recently the family
came together for a little
baking instruction to
learn everything from
the ingredients to the
technique—even writing
it down on paper for the
very first time so it could
be passed down to future
generations. Phyllis and
daughters Linda, Lena
McCauley and Julie
Mattar got to work in the
kitchen with a few helpful
assists from Phyllis’ husband, Aldo, and
granddaughter Madison Doherty.
For Phyllis, the cinnamon twirl dough glides
effortlessly from mixing bowl to baking board to
cookie sheet. She rolls out the chilled dough on
the well-used baking board handed down from
her mother-in-law, sprinkles it with cinnamon
filling, slices it gently into wedges using her
scalloped-edge pastry wheel, and quickly rollsit up with a f lick of the wrist. In just minutes,
a full cookie sheet is ready to go into the oven.
Next it’s time for her daughters to try. Phyllis
is a patient teacher, showing each daughter in
turn exactly how it’s done, laughing and joking
as they ask questions and attempt her signature
rolling technique. As Phyllis’ daughters soon
discover, making Mom’s famous cookies is
nowhere near as easy
as she makes it look.
Lena, Julie and Linda
all do their best and study
their mom’s every move,
but quickly realize they’ll
need time to make them
just like Phyllis.
“No one can roll them
like her,” Lena says after
multiple tries.
It’s understandable—
Phyllis has had a lot of
practice. At age 18, she
came to America from
Naples and met Aldo, also
from Italy, just a few years
later. She cooked and
baked extensively before
leaving her home country
and carried her skills into
her life here. Now their
extended family around
Boston, nearly 60 people
strong, shares in the
deliciousness that comes from her kitchen. The
cookies are a staple, of course, along with many
other varieties of sweets. Homemade gravy (red
sauce), meatballs every Sunday, from-scratch
bread, polenta, pistachio cake, Italian wedding
soup and more have been on the family table
daily since the days when Phyllis’ own children
were small.
“We call our childhood house ‘the house“Food and family are
everything to us. We
love being together.”