Borża ta' San Martin: What to Put in a St Martin's Bag
Put together a Maltese St Martin's bag with nuts, dried figs, seasonal fruit and a sweet bun for the November feast.
A borża ta’ San Martin is a bag of nuts, fruit and a sweet bun given to children for the Maltese feast of St Martin. The feast falls on 11 November, with local celebrations around that date. It belongs to the autumn calendar, when dried figs, nuts and seasonal fruit make a generous little gift.
What Goes in the Bag?
Read about the saint, Baħrija’s celebrations and the autumn traditions in San Martin in Malta.
Familiar contents include walnuts, almonds, chestnuts, dried figs and a Ħobża ta’ San Martin. Apples, oranges, tangerines and pomegranates are among the fruit used. Families vary the selection and quantities; there is no need to fit every kind of fruit into one small bag.
The bun is a soft sweet bread, often flavoured with aniseed and finished with a glaze, sesame and a liquorice sweet. Bake a batch at home or use ready-made St Martin’s buns.
A Shopping List for Four Bags
Use these quantities as a starting point and adjust them to the size of your bags.
| Item | For four bags | In each bag |
|---|---|---|
| St Martin’s buns | 4, fully cooled | 1 bun |
| Walnuts in their shells | About 100g | A quarter of the batch |
| Almonds in their shells | About 100g | A quarter of the batch |
| Fresh chestnuts in their shells | 8 | 2 chestnuts |
| Soft dried figs | 8 | 2 figs |
| Small oranges or clementines | 4 | 1 fruit |
You will also need four clean bags and food-safe paper or small food bags for wrapping. An apple can replace the citrus fruit. Keep fresh chestnuts refrigerated until you assemble the bags, and tell the recipient to cook them before eating; our roasted chestnut recipe explains scoring, roasting and peeling.
How to Assemble the Bags
- Prepare the contents. Bake the buns and let them cool completely on a rack. Check the nuts and dried figs, then wash and thoroughly dry the fresh fruit.
- Wrap the bun. Use food-safe paper or a small food bag so that the bread stays separate from the shells and fresh fruit. Use a food-safe inner bag if the outer cloth bag is decorative.
- Divide the nuts and figs. Put a share in each bag, with the heavier fruit and nuts near the bottom. Leave room for the wrapped bun at the top so it keeps its shape.
- Give them fresh. Assemble close to giving, ideally on the day the buns are baked. Add a small note identifying the contents and reminding the recipient to cook the chestnuts.
Choose contents appropriate to the recipient. For young children, give the bag to an adult who can shell, cut and serve the food suitably; whole nuts are not suitable for small children. Check nut and bun ingredients before preparing bags for someone with an allergy.
Make a San Martin Table as Well
Serve spare buns with coffee, or bake Torta ta’ San Martin for a dense cake of dates, figs and nuts. The cake is a separate bake from the sweet bread that goes into the bag.
For an easy extra on a serving plate, try walnut-stuffed dried figs. This is a seasonal serving idea using two familiar bag ingredients. Plain dried figs are the choice in the bag described above.
Find more bakes, warm snacks and drinks in the autumn and November collection.