On Santa Lucia’s day, 13 December, Palermo makes arancine in every shape and flavour, including sweet ones. These sweet orange arancine have a rice-pudding base and a frozen ball of Scyavuru Orange Cream hidden in the centre, which melts into a molten heart as they fry.

Prepare the rice and freeze the filling the day before. They are best served warm, rolled in cinnamon sugar. For the other Santa Lucia sweet, try Cuccìa for Santa Lucia.

Difficulty: Medium
Course: Dessert / Street food
Time: Prep about 2 h (+ overnight chilling) · Fry in batches
Made with: Scyavuru Orange Cream

Ingredients for sweet orange arancine

Sweet rice

  • 450 g Arborio rice
  • 830 ml water
  • 910 g whole milk
  • 380 g caster sugar
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract

Filling

  • 400 g Scyavuru Orange Cream (2 jars)

Coating

  • 120 g all-purpose flour
  • 4 eggs, whisked with 120 ml water
  • 225 g fine dry breadcrumbs
  • About 950 ml neutral oil, for frying
  • 395 g granulated sugar + 1 tbsp ground cinnamon

How to make sweet orange arancine

  1. 1. Rice (the day before) Boil the water, add the rice and cook for about 10 minutes, until most of the water is absorbed.
  2. 2. Sweeten Warm the milk, caster sugar and vanilla until the sugar dissolves and it just simmers; don’t let it boil. Add it to the rice and cook for about 15 minutes more, until thick and sticky like rice pudding. Cover and chill overnight.
  3. 3. Freeze the filling (the day before) Pipe 2 cm blobs of Orange Cream onto baking paper and freeze them overnight.
  4. 4. Shape Roll the cold rice into golf-ball-sized balls. Press a frozen blob of Orange Cream into each and close the rice around it. Work quickly.
    Pressing a frozen ball of orange cream into a rice pudding ball
  5. 5. Coat Dredge each ball in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs.
    Coating rice balls in breadcrumbs
  6. 6. Fry Heat the oil to 180 °C and fry in batches until golden. Drain briefly and roll in the cinnamon sugar while still warm. Serve warm.
    Rolling a fried arancina in cinnamon sugar

Tips

  • Coated, unfried arancine keep a few days in the fridge, or up to 3 months in the freezer. Thaw them before frying.

Try it with…

Did you know?

  • On Santa Lucia’s day, 13 December, Palermo skips bread and pasta and eats arancine instead.
  • The arancina takes its name from its round, orange-like shape. Around Catania it is cone-shaped and called arancino.
  • Whether it is arancina or arancino is still argued over between Palermo and Catania.
  • A sweet arancina filled with chocolate-hazelnut spread is one of the Santa Lucia variations.

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