The Eternity of Affections.

Cuori di Nonna Maddalena.

This recipe lives beyond time: passed down from generation to generation, untouched, as if the gesture of the hands were always the same, repeating itself, unchanging, between past and present. It does not change, because it carries within itself the value of a greater love, one that needs no embellishment, but reveals itself in a warm, fragrant biscuit, broken in half to be shared.

Nonna Maddalena has been, and still is today, the center: at 95 she continues to prepare these biscuits with the same tenderness as always, happy to have her home filled with grandchildren and their friends, all welcomed as children. Her kitchen remains the beating heart around which entire generations gather. There, among pots and flour, she still today comforts anyone who sits at that table. No one is left a stranger: it takes only a breath of that atmosphere to feel part of a larger family.

These biscuits thus hold a promise: they are not just flour, sugar, butter, and homemade jam. They are the testimony of a domestic art passed down without possession, like a silent gift that survives time.

Riccardo Perillo, founder of Future Maastricht Museum & Gallery, entrusted me with this recipe not as a private fragment, but as a symbolic gesture: a handover carrying the same breath as our conception of collecting. In that gesture, I recognized a common root: gathering not to possess, but to preserve and to give back. Not to accumulate objects, but to generate meaning.

Our vision of collecting — the one we embody in our curatorial philosophy at Future — does not end in the act of acquisition nor in the notion of ownership. It is rather a device of care, a symbolic horizon that unites memory and present. Each work, like each of Nonna Maddalena’s biscuits, is a tangible sign of something that transcends it: for us, a trace of life, a nucleus of values, a bond that cannot be broken. A collection then becomes a shared space, not a closed repository, but a living organism that belongs to all who come into contact with it — just like Maddalena’s kitchen, where anyone who sits at her table has always been welcomed.

In this parallel lies the strength of our vision: collecting as an affective and communal practice, capable of transforming what is material into a higher value, into a symbol that speaks of continuity, of care, and of future.

The Cuori di Nonna Maddalena thus become more than a recipe: they become the perfect metaphor for a form of collecting that is not based on possessing, but on sharing. An invisible yet real collection, made of stories, gestures, and memories, passed down and renewed, like a biscuit that continues to fill the house with fragrance, still today, across generations.

Ingredients (20 biscuits)

• 500 g flour

• 200 g butter

• 200 g sugar

• 4 egg yolks and 1 egg white

• Homemade peach and apricot jam

Preparation
Take the flour, 500 grams falling like slow snow onto the table, and at its center let the promise of butter melt: 200 grams, cut into pieces, soft and silent. Add the sugar, 200 grams of shining crystals bringing light and sweetness. Then the eggs: four yolks filled with sun and one white as light as a breath, ready to give life to the dough.

Work it with patience, until the dough becomes smooth and gentle. Roll it out with a rolling pin, and from that pale expanse cut out small hearts, all alike yet all different, like the heartbeats that inspired the recipe.

Here lies the secret: each heart receives a spoonful of jam — apricot and peach, homemade, dense and fragrant, kept in jars that still tell of summer. The edges of the dough close delicately, sealing the filling like an embrace.

Then the biscuits are laid on a baking sheet, lined with parchment paper, arranged like a small procession of memories.

The oven — fan-assisted, already hot — awaits them: 170°C (340°F) for 12–15 minutes, until the edges turn golden and the fragrance fills the kitchen. It is important not to overbake: they must remain pale at the center, golden only at the edges, crisp yet tender.

Once baked, they are left to cool slightly: and only then do the Cuori di Nonna Maddalena reveal their secret soul, a heart of fruit that melts with each bite, sweet as a memory that does not fade.

These biscuits are not just sweets: they are a gesture of love, a memory preserved, a heart given whole.

And as the Cuori di Nonna Maddalena rest on the table, I pour a glass to honor this shared treasure. I have chosen a Passito di Pantelleria, a wine that tastes of sun and wind, with aromas of apricot, honey, and orange blossom: as if it had gathered within itself the same sweetness you, nonna, have always placed in your biscuits.

I taste a biscuit and a sip, and I realize there is no difference: both speak of care, of slow time, of generosity. I toast to you, who at 95 still keep your home full, making us all feel part of your circle. I toast to your memory that never ages, to your table that welcomes without asking for anything in return, and to your gesture that becomes legacy.

Each glass is a thank you, each biscuit a memory renewed.
And in this encounter between wine and heart, I find the purest form of collecting: not to possess, but to preserve and to share.

To your sweetness, nonna.... Always.

© Charlotte Madeleine Castelli | All rights reserved