The greatest cake in the world might be cassata. Shelled in marzipan, decked with candied fruit, and filled with cannoli cream, cassata is the old, festival spirit of the Italian South in pastry form. Candied fruit is the best part. With sweetened ricotta and marzipan's nuttiness, the potent candied fruit drops you into a world of spice routes and summer harvests and sixth-generation bakers quietly working down crooked alleys.

Andrea Tuck, owner of A Bakeshop in Phoenix, bakes cassata. Hers is one of the few bakeries in town that does, which is not surprising. But she skips the marzipan and fruit, which is.