When she was 13 years old, Maria Mifsud would help her mother make pastizzi using the cheeselets prepared earlier after milking the goats in their family farm. Six decades later, Maria – now 72 – is still making the same round cupcake-shaped cheesecakes using the exact same recipe.

The only difference is that she now makes them with her son, his wife and her grandson. Together they make 100 dozen pastizzi every morning – before the sun rises – to cope with the high demand at their Rabat restaurant, Peristyle.

Maria, however, is now concerned that as she grows tired and contemplates retirement, this labour-intensive family tradition will end with her. “It is a lot of hard work. I just hope that, when I am gone, this tradition will continue. I am getting tired, but I hope that my mother’s recipe will continue,” she chuckles.

Over the past decades, the Peristyle pastizzi have become well known, with many heading to the Rabat restaurant from all parts of the island – and beyond. “I recently was contacted by a woman in Canada who said she is coming to Malta in February and wants to see me make pastizzi,” Maria says.

Maria recounts how she was the fourth of eight children – the first girl after three boys. From a very young age, she helped her mother, Carmen, around the house.

“My mum would not shy away from getting us to help her. I’d help look after the animals on the Rabat farm, mend torn socks and make the ġbejniet from the goats’ milk. They had to be prepared while the milk was fresh and still warm. And I would help her make pastizzi and ravjul. She was always making them to give them out for free to relatives and to our family doctor,” she recalls.

When Maria grew up and married her husband, Peter, they ran a restaurant called Stazzjon in Rabat. Then, one day, they learnt that the house next door to their Rabat home was for sale and decided to buy it to turn it into a restaurant.“We worked very hard to set it up. We wanted to build something for our children – Marica and Mark,” she said, adding that in 1997 they opened the family restaurant. They called it Peristyle, inspired by the row of columns outside the historical Domus Romana located across the road.

The pastizzi contain a blend of goats’ cheese, ricotta and eggs.

Soon word started to spread that the delicious homemade round cheesecakes could be found there.

But what makes her pastizzi so special?

“Nowadays, they don’t do pastizzi like we do anymore. I still follow my mother’s recipe. I do not make the ġbejniet like I did when I was a teenager. But I get them from a local farmer to make sure they are fresh and authentic. The filling of our pastizzi contains a blend of goats cheese, ricotta and eggs,” she says.

Keeping up with the high demand is a constant production line. Maria wakes up at 2am and starts preparing the mixture to fill the cheesecakes or ravjul with the help of her daughter-in-law Sara. Her son, Mark, and grandson Luke, make the filo pastry.

“You need strength in your arms to roll out all that pastry. I don’t have that strength any longer,” she says, adding that they use a sack of flour every day to make about 100 dozen cheesecakes which they freeze to be cooked the following day.

“I make them round as my mother showed me.  So, you have to lay the bottom pastry layer in a round cupcake sort of tin, insert the filling then lay the top part of the pastry. The traditional-shaped cheesecake has an opening on the top. This does not work for my filling since the goats’ cheese oozes out. And you don’t want all that hard work to be lost,” she says.