Before Shannon Swindle even got the job as pastry chef at Mother Wolf in Los Angeles, he knew maritozzi were destined for the dessert menu. The restaurant’s bouncy, football-shaped Italian brioche buns are filled with an absurd amount of cloud-like whipped cream and hide a surprise sweet-tart pocket of macerated Harry’s Berries. “It’s a bit more dessert-y than the classic” bun, which is typically eaten for breakfast in Italy, Swindle says. But it’s still “iconically Roman.”
The original maritozzo—a dough-based roll sliced open and stuffed with a neat swipe of cream—supposedly dates back to medieval Rome, where a dairy-free version filled with dried fruit and nuts was eaten during Lent. And the lightly sweetened, cream-filled masterpiece was allegedly used to hide an engagement ring during a marriage proposal. (The word marito means husband in Italian.)
