When you think of great pastries, what comes to mind? Maybe you envision some laborious, beloved union of flour and sugar, something like a cannoli or almond-filled croissant. When you think of great Italian desserts, I bet your mind zips to sweet staples like gelato or tiramisu, or maybe something more obscure like semifreddo or zabaglione. Today, we’re going to talk about an outlier: the sfogliatelle.

Sfogliatelle (singular: sfogliatella) are humble clamshell-shaped pastries. They are about the size of a baseball, vaguely triangle-shaped, and piped full of lightly sweetened ricotta. The golden-brown crust is madly, intricately fluted. Dozens of razor-thin dough layers lace the baked clamshell, almost like the pages of a book seen from the side.