Cassatelle di Sant’Agata are typical sweets of Catania that it is customary to consume as the very heartfelt patronal feast of Sant’Agata approaches, together with the olives of Sant’Agata. The cassatelle di Sant’Agata are, in fact, sponge cakes filled with ricotta cream on which a very sweet coating of almond paste and white royal ice is placed a candied cherry as decoration. The shape is hemispherical and alludes to the martyrdom of Saint Agatha whose breasts were torn by order of the Roman proconsul Quinziano after he had been rejected by the young Christian virgin. Precisely because of their shape in Sicilian they are also called "minne (ie breasts) of Sant’Agata".
