Brunetti’s in Carlton is a Melbourne icon. Not least for its tiny, almost-bite sized cakes with all different fillings and ingredients.

Pastry chef Fabio Angele makes a huge variety of what is known as pasticceria mignon – tiny, almost-bite sized cakes with all different fillings and ingredients. Two of these are bignoline and sfogliatelle - custard and sweet cheese filled pastries that are an Italian favourite.

Sfogliatelle (“Sfol-yah-tel-leh”) are golden cones of flakey pastry, filled with ricotta cheese, semolina flour and lemon dusted with icing sugar. They are traditionally associated with Naples and take considerable skill to prepare properly. Bigne or bignoline, on the other hand, are little balls of choux pastry filled with sweet custard and iced in different flavours – usually vanilla, chocolate, coffee, pistachio and zabaglione.

Traditionally made for the noble families of the Renaissance period, both are now popular either as a sweet start to the day or for a dolce (dessert) on a Sunday afternoon after a big Italian lunch!

The Angele family have a long history in the pastry industry. Pastrymaker Fabio’s dad, Giorgio Angele was trained in Rome from the young age of 10. Arriving for the first time in Australia in 1956 as the official pastry chef for the visiting Italian Olympic Team, he migrated here shortly afterwards to start his own Roman style pasticceria.