A pastry chef from Salento has dedicated one of his sweet creations to U.S. president Barack Obama – his idea has been so successful that “Pasticciotto Obama” is even featured on Travelers Today as one of 4 things not to miss if traveling to Europe in 2014.
Pasticciotto is a typical dessert from the Salento area of Apulia, consisting of pastry filled with custard and baked in the oven. Angelo Bisconti, owner of Pasticceria Cheri in Campi Salentina, has come up with a variation that has a chocolate base and a filling made of a mixture of sugar, eggs, flour and cocoa.
It all happened in 2008, when Bisconti struggled to come up with a new, tempting pastry to offer his customers. He slowly refined the pasticciotto until he had exactly what he was looking for. But the new dessert still didn’t have a name: it was the morning of November 5, 2008 and the election of America's first black president was front-page news; Bisconti decided to honor him by naming his new dessert after Obama.
It was a lucky idea: in the years since, Bisconti has been able increase production of pasticciotto Obama from 50 to 5,000 pieces a day, which also allowed him to open ten new positions at his shop.
His dream, he says, is to have the president himself taste it. However, he’s not going to send it over to him: “Either I go to the U.S. or hopefully he comes here – when I present Pasticciotto Obama to the president, it has to be in person.”
