Erice is a small town on the west side of Sicily. With unusual architecture and friendly people, there is a pastry shop that my Chef suggested me to see, since he met the lady who owns it. After 30 minutes walking around, we finally found a little old style pastry shop packed with all kinds of marzipan products.



Southern Italy, as well as Sicily is famous for marzipan products since they have almonds in abundance. I was especially amazed with fruits and vegetables made out of marzipan that look as if they were real! Fabulous!



The lady - Maria Grammatico is almost turning 70 and still working a full day job, starting from 8 in the morning to midnight. Crazy. She is a former nun and she learned everything from the nuns and eventually opened her bakeshop or as they call it ''laboratorio''.



We met with her and tried to have a conversation with my broken Italian, but we did it. She gave us a tour of her bakeshop and I especially liked the almond grinder to make marzipan.




All the products were fantastic, except some doughs that were made of margarine and I am not very fond of it.



She also invited me to come and work there for a month, which is amazing, but we shall see. Oh, one more thing - s few of her products are exported to the US, especially the quince paste which you can get at Dean & DeLuca.

All in all, it was a great day, lots of new experiences and many sweets!!