Pastry making class at Rita’s farm
Cooking ClassesDuration:From 2 to 3 hours + time for lunch or dinner
Rates
OUR PASTRY MAKING CLASS
The Tuscan pastry tradition has always been rich of delicious cakes. Locals eat pastries in the morning for breakfast, accompanying their cappuccino, or at the end of a meal as a dessert. There are a lot of grannies recipes to take inspiration from. Arianna & Friends organize a pastry making class at My Tuscan Kitchen cooking school, in a typical Tuscan cottage with a breathtaking view over the Pisan hills, together with one of our expert chefs.
The charming setting of Rita’s farm in Tuscany
As the cooking traditions of Tuscany date back to the times in which the locals were mostly all farmers, the best setting for our pastry making classes is an original Tuscan farmhouse. We bring you to Rita’s farm in the countryside just outside of Montefoscoli, between Pisa and Volterra, and we start our class with a quick historical introduction to the place, to let you understand much about the origins of our cuisine.
Baking cakes with our granny
After visiting Rita’s farm and getting acquainted with her lovely pets as well as her chickens and donkeys, we will access to our rustic-style cooking school and get to meet a local cook, who will be the chef of our pastry making class. The setting is very informal and familiar and the recipes and cakes selected are rooted into the Tuscan culinary tradition. You will learn a lot of tips on how to bake or prepare simple but delicious cookies, cakes and pies. We offer three types of experience, from simply making cakes and serving them in a following snack to combining making cakes and pizza or pasta and serving them in a following full meal.
A – Pastry making class with snack
The easiest and quickest formula is our simple pastry making class. You will choose 3 desserts from our menu options and depending on your choice the class will take 2 to 3 hours. You can opt among many different preparations, from a tiramisù to fruit tart or from a chocolate salami to a Christmas or festivity specialty like ricciarelli. All your preparations will be tasted in merenda served after with coffee or tea. All leftovers will be packed for you to take home.
B – Pastry & pizza making class with dinner or lunch
If you want the pastry making experience to be an occasion for a full meal, we integrate our regular pastry making class with a pizza making experience. You will start the experience with the making of a pizza dough, which will have to rest to rise for a couple of hours. After this, you will dedicate 2 hours to the preparation of 2 of your favorite desserts, choosing them from our menu list. From an orange tiramisù to a torta della nonna, you can freely choose the cakes you want to make and our granny will share with you a lot of expertise and wise tips. After finishing with the desserts, we will prepare all toppings for your pizzas and finally bake it. The experience will be completed by a full meal in which you enjoy your favorite pizzas and desserts, accompanied by excellent local wines. If the class starts in the morning your meall will be lunch, whereas if the class is in the afternoon, it will be dinner. All leftovers will be packed for you to take home.
C – Pastry & pasta making class with dinner or lunch
As an alternative to option B, we can join a pastry making class to a pasta making experience. We will start our class with 2 desserts from our menu list: you can opt from pesche al liquore to a pear & chocolate tart according to your taste and interest. Our granny chef will provide plenty of help and information and the experience will culminate in a pasta making class. We will choose for you a variety of pasta and a topping according to your preference (meat or vegetarian) for a memorable meal. The experience will be completed by a full meal in which you enjoy your favorite pasta and desserts, served with excellent local wines. If the class starts in the morning your meall will be lunch, whereas if the class is in the afternoon, it will be dinner. All leftovers will be packed for you to take home.
Our private classes can be arranged for small groups of max 12 people.
Below you find our menu list with all the desserts:
- Cantuccini alle mandorle e cioccolato – Typical almond & chocolate biscuits
- Pesche all’alchermes – Peach-shaped typical pastry with Alchermes liquor filled with custard
- Torta di mele – Apple cake Tuscan style
- Crostata di frutta – Short crust pastry tart with custard and fresh fruit
- Torta della nonna – Type of custard pie with pine nuts
- Salamino al cioccolato – Salami-shaped dessert made of chocolate, dry biscuits and liquor
- Tiramisù tradizionale al caffè e cioccolato – Traditional Tiramisu with coffee and chocolate
- Tiramisù alle fragole – Strawberry Tiramisu (only in spring and summer)
- Tiramisù all’arancia – Tiramisu with oranges and cinnamon (only in autumn/fall and winter)
- Torta cioccolato e pere – traditional chocolate and pear cake
- Zuppa inglese – Tuscan trifle with custard, sponge biscuits and liquor
- Castagnaccio – Type of tart with chestnut flour and pine nuts GLUTEN FREE
- Schiacciata con l’uva – Sweet bread oven baked, with grapes (only from August through December) / VEGAN
- Ricciarelli- Typical Christmas cookies with almond flour. Available all year around
Gluten free options are possible using gluten free cookies for dolce n. 6-7-8.
What you taste
In our cooking class we like telling you a lot about Tuscan farms and farmers' cooking traditions, introducing you to Tuscan people with their personal stories, careers and characters.
You will have one of our guides as a language assistants and coordinator with you during the whole class. Please, see below all the guides and language assistants who can be with you.
During this experience you will also meet one of our Tuscan cooks who give you the cooking class. Please, see below which cooks you are likely to encounter.
Ciao, I'm Ester, one of the cooks of Arianna & Friends'. I've been working with them since the beginning of their adventure.
I love cooking together with people from all over the world, especailly with young kids.
What I prefer to cook is pasta dishes, pizza and desserts, like for example the stunning cake is what I made to celebrate my 50th wedding anniversary.
I live, like the cook Licia (we are good friends), in the little village of Lajatico, birthplace of Andrea Bocelli and from my home I can hear his voice and see something when Teatro del Silenzio takes place in July.
I live in a farm and I have chickens, rabbits, a large vegetable garden; I make my own olive oil and wine together with my family.
I hope to be able to cook with many of you in the years to come to teach you a lot of our typical Tuscan food. 
Ciao, I'm Silvia, the youngest among the cooks at Arianna & Friends. I'm a cook, this is my passion and I like to cook any traditional dishes for the toursits, and I love baking pizza, but also I like a lot to try at home innovative food and special contemporary techniques. Since I've been working with this company I met an incredible team of collaborators and with them I finally feel joy and serenity in what I do. I love my job very much and I enjoy a lot to be in contact with people.
To introduce me even better I can say I love the sea, being at the beach, I have a passion to travel and being in the company of my friends is the best thing. I could define myself as a "free spirit" and I have a passion for... hats !!!
Any time I work as cook I breath air of freedom and this makes me happy.
Looking forward to meet you again, so that we can cook together, and you'll try our best traditional food and enjoy our wonderful countryside. 
The total rate for this activity varies according to the number of people in your party.
Check rates in the table below.
PASTRY CLASS AT rITA’S FARMRATES 2023 |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type OF CLASS |
total rate for2 peoplE |
Total rate for3 people |
Total rate for4 people |
eXTRA
|
eXTRA
|
EXTRA
|
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| A – PASTRY MAKING CLASS WITH MERENDA 3 desserts of your choice from our menu list |
€ 420 | € 460 | € 500 | € 40 | € 35 | € 30 | |||||
| B – PASTRY AND PIZZA MAKING CLASS WITH LUNCH OR DINNER 2 desserts of your choice from our menu list + assorted pizzas and sweet pizza |
€ 500 | € 550 | € 600 | € 50 | € 45 | € 40 | |||||
| C – PASTRY AND PASTA MAKING CLASS WITH LUNCH OR DINNER 2 desserts of your choice from our menu list + hand-made pasta with a meat or vegetarian sauce |
€ 500 | € 550 | € 600 | € 50 | € 45 | € 40 | |||||
Rates include
- A 2 or 3-hour pastry cooking class
- A chef at your disposal
- An English tour leader and language assistant. Also available in French, German, Spanish and Russian
- A lunch or dinner with the pizza or pasta menu options
- Tasting of 2 or 3 desserts
- Personal aprons as souvenirs
- A short visit to Rita’s farm
- Tax
Rates do NOT include
- Transportation
Transportation is not included in the rates above. For more info on transportation, please see the box “Transportation options”.
This is an email we received from Jana and Roddrick on their honeymoon in Tuscany and doing a truffle hunting tour and a pastry class with us:
Massimo,
Here are the pictures we promised! We had the most amazing time on this whole-day tour with you. We thank you for custom-making this tour to fit all the things we wanted to do! It was simply amazing and we had more fun than we knew what to do with! I know we went to bed smiling and talking about it for many days afterwards. Every part of it was memorable, fun and perfect! If we are ever fortunate enough to come back to Italy, we are certainly booking with you guys and spending more time in that region. I have recommended you guys to my friends who are planning their trip to Italy in March. I know you will give them the same spectacular treatment that you did us! Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for making our honeymoon memorable and exciting! Hugs to Massimo and all our Italian friends we met along the way!
Sincerely,
Roddrick & Jana
This is another message after we answered them:
Hey Massimo!
You deserved every word. 🙂 I am glad you got the pictures and can use them to remember us. We definitely would love to come back to that region again one day and you KNOW we will be calling you! If you get to come to the US, do not hesitate to call on us! We’d love to see you and we even have an extra room & bathroom to put you up for the night if you need it. 🙂 We talked to our friends that are coming to Italy next May and they are going to start working on their trip so I gave them your website and all the info so they can figure out what they want. Hopefully they will take our advice and use you guys! We talked to Roddrick’s dad a bit about the melon liquor and we bought some in Capri to bring back for him to taste. Of course, it wasn’t quite the same as what we had with you, but it gave him an idea of what we were talking about. He loved the stuff and he said we’d need to sit down and talk about it for sure! SO I’ll keep you informed! 🙂 Thanks for everything and keep in touch!!
Sincerely,
~Jana
This is an email we received from Sallie and Karen, who spent 10 days in Tuscany in our farm and enjoyed our pastry shop experience, our painting class and our cooking class:
Hi Arianna,
Just a quick note to thank you and the team very much for the incredible job you all did during our recent trip to Tuscany. Special thanks to Massimo and Consuelo for helping solve the GPS problem, the replacement Tom Tom worked extremely well and was a definite “must have” for foreigners trying to navigate their way around Italy. Also, to Massimo and Veronica for joining us and translating during our Cooking and Painting classes, their knowledge and experience, without a doubt, enhanced our experience during each of them.
With regard to the Pastry & Pizza Cooking Class we did with Massimo, he mentioned that copies of each of the recipes will be emailed to us, can I also remind you about that please, as we haven’t received them yet?
Thanks again.
Sallie & Karen
This cooking class takes place in the village of Peccioli, in central Tuscany, among Pisa, San Gimignano and Volterra, about 10 km from Selvatelle.
MEET-UP LOCATION:
Unless differently specified, the meeting point with the language assistant is at an easy meeting point near Peccioli. Detailled instructions will be provided.
DURATION:
This program takes from 2 to 4 hous + time for lunch or dinner
AVAILABILITY:
Available all the year through, from Mondays to Saturdays in the morning, followed by lunch, or in the afternoon, followed by dinner.
LANGUAGE:
This class is available in English, German, French, Spanish, Russian or Italian with no surcharge.
DIFFICULTY LEVEL:
Easy
CHILD FRIENDLY:
Ideal for children
CLOTHING:
No particular clothing required.
FOOD RESTRICTIONS:
The foods served during this cooking class might contain gluten, lactose, nuts and alcohol. If you have any food restriction, please inform our personnel during the enquiry process.
TRANSPORTATION:
This program and its rates do not include transportation and are set on a self-driving base. For further information see the box "transportation options".
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