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Italian Desserts Word Search

A word search dedicated to Italian desserts, perfect for a tasty tour of Italian pastry. Hidden in the grid are seven words to find: tiramisu, cannoli, cassata, baba, zeppole, sfogliatella and pannacotta. Each name carries a piece of Italian regional tradition. Print it for free or download it as a PDF: ideal for a cultural lesson or a sweet-themed classroom activity.

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Italian Desserts, one by one

Italy is famous for its pastry, and every region has its own specialities. The seven words in this grid are well-known desserts, and below is a short note on each, which turns solving the puzzle into a small tour of Italian flavours.

Tiramisu — Perhaps the most famous Italian dessert worldwide; its name means "pick me up", thanks to the coffee and energy it provides.

Cannoli — A symbol of Sicily: a crisp shell filled with sweet ricotta right before serving to keep it crunchy.

Cassata — Also Sicilian, a celebration of ricotta, sponge cake and colourful marzipan — the dessert of special occasions.

Baba — From Naples, soft as a sponge and soaked in rum, with a distinctive mushroom-like shape.

Zeppole — The dessert of Saint Joseph's Day, topped with cream and a cherry.

Sfogliatella — From Naples, made of many thin, crisp layers filled with sweet ricotta cream.

Pannacotta — A delicate spoon dessert from Piedmont, served with caramel or berry sauce.

A dessert for every feast

Many Italian desserts belong to a particular feast. Zeppole are eaten on 19 March, Saint Joseph's Day, which in Italy is also Father's Day; cannoli began as a Carnival sweet in Sicily; cassata is linked to Easter; and the sfogliatella was born in a convent on the Amalfi Coast before it conquered Naples. Even tiramisu is younger than most people think: according to the stories, it appeared in the north-east of Italy around the 1960s.

These names are also a mini grammar lesson. Italian nouns that end in -o usually form their plural in -i, and those that end in -a in -e, which is why one cannolo becomes two cannoli and one zeppola becomes two zeppole. In English the plural is the form people use for the dessert, so we order “cannoli” and “zeppole” even for a single one. The name baba recalls the Polish word for grandmother, while pannacotta, “cooked cream”, is simply two Italian words joined together for the grid.

Four games between the pastry shop and the map

These desserts are a good excuse to mix vocabulary, geography and a little imagination:

  • Dessert and region. On a map of Italy the children place the seven desserts: Sicily for cannoli and cassata, Campania for baba, zeppole and sfogliatella, Piedmont for pannacotta and the north-east for tiramisu.
  • Invent a dessert. Each child imagines a new dessert, gives it a name, lists three ingredients and draws it, then presents it to the class like a contestant in a baking show.
  • At the pastry shop. Set up a pretend pastry shop: one child is the customer and another the baker, and the desserts are ordered and “paid for” with play money, so counting and polite requests are practised together.
  • Singular and plural. Write cannolo, zeppola and sfogliatella on cards and ask the children to form the plurals, then compare the Italian endings with the English -s: cannoli, zeppole, sfogliatelle.

How this grid is built

This is one of the biggest grids on the site: 13×13 squares for seven words, because SFOGLIATELLA, with twelve letters, would not fit in a 10×10 grid. All seven words are horizontal, with none vertical and none diagonal, and each one sits on a row of its own, like cakes on the shelves of a pastry shop. SFOGLIATELLA stretches along the seventh row to the right-hand edge; BABA, with four letters, is the shortest and sits on the top row. No two words cross, and the first column is empty.

A pastry shop of your own

To make a pastry shop of your own, open the generator with the Food theme and add more sweets: gelato, cornetto, crostata, biscotti, cantucci. The generator removes spaces and accents for you, so tiramisù becomes TIRAMISU and panna cotta becomes PANNACOTTA, the forms used in this grid.

Also in Italian

In Italian the same sweets are written tiramisù, cannolo, cassata, babà, zeppola, sfogliatella and panna cotta, with accents and the singular forms. The Italian version, Crucipuzzle dei Dolci Italiani, is the same size, 13×13, but mixes the directions: four words are horizontal, two vertical and one diagonal.

More word searches to try

To stay among Italian flavours, try these word searches too:

Many more ways to use food vocabulary in the classroom are suggested in the article Food word search puzzles.