What are boob cakes, and why do Italians love them so much?

The boob cake cult is flourishing in the south of Italy, where the locals are deeply religious and superstitious.

They are mouthwatering, handmade half-sphere sponge cup cakes that recall the small, firm breasts of a teenage girl (practically a D bra size). Filled with oozing cream or fresh ricotta sheep’s cheese mixed with cinnamon, lemon juice and dark chocolate crumbs, they’re covered in a thick crunchy layer and topped with a tiny sugary ball resembling a nipple.

“Making and indulging in boob-shaped cup cakes is a way to honour the martyrdom of Saint Agatha, the beloved patron saint of many southern towns”, says Annarita Verde, an anthropologist of culinary traditions. “But the cult of baking roundish sweets shaped like the bosom of a woman hails back to the ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman times when people performed rites and sacrifices to the goddess of fertility and abundance called Ceres or Demeter.”

Despite the sweetness of the boob cake, it’s tied to a dark story that occurred in the third century.

Saint Agatha was a teenaged Christian virgin who was harassed and tortured by a lewd Roman consul obsessed by her looks and grace. Agatha resisted his wooing so the aristocrat plucked out her breasts with a pair of tweezers. Agatha's bosom miraculously grew back and she healed, but her harasser, ever more mad, killed her by making her roll naked over burning coals.

However, her breasts and other parts of her body, survived the flames and turned into holy relics. As one boob ended up in one location and the other elsewhere, Agatha is now a patron saint of several towns in the south of Italy.  

In the village of Altamura, set in the deep Puglia region where one breast relic is cherished, people are ashamed to call these sexy cakes “virgin boobs” so have settled for the more subtle “Venus or Nuns’ sighs” to stress how good they are. Tasting one literally makes a person sigh with pleasure, offering a gastronomical ecstasy. Here they’re filled with a delicate cream and a shower of thin sugar is sprinkled on top, and come in two variants: with or without a shiny white icing. The nuns of the local monastery still oversee the pastry-making process, which has been handed down to a chef.

The sighs have become a protected cake in the nearby town of Bisceglie, where a congregation of pastry chefs zealously cherish the original recipe, made with sponge cake covered in fine sugar mixed with aromatic spices.

“Legend has it that the first sigh was made by a nun during the Renaissance for the wedding of Lucrezia Borgia to a local lord, but it was never celebrated so the guests sighed and sighed both for the time they had to wait and for the exquisite cup cakes served anyway”, says local housewife Giulia Specchia, who makes sighs at her Bisceglie home.

Euphemisms have been used elsewhere to avoid calling the boob cakes.