Festive cakes and sweetmeats
Amaretti: Almond macaroons flavoured with ground apricot kernels.
Anicini: Small Sardinian aniseed biscuits.
Baci di dama: Round, almond-flavoured biscuits stuck together in pairs with chocolate ganache.
Baicoli: Made from a dough similar to brioche, they are baked in rolls, left 48 hours to dry out, sliced very finely and then dried out like melba toast in a low oven.
Cantucci, from Prato in Tuscany: Toasted nuts and orange essence are added to a sabayon-based dough made with a little bicarb added to the flour. It's baked as a long flattened loaf, sliced and baked again until hard.
Chiacchiere: See recipe.
Colomba: Lombardy cake, sometimes in the form of a dove.
Croccante: Sugar and nut confection served with coffee in many Italian restaurants.
Pampetato: Ring-shaped Christmas bread-cake from Ferrara flavoured with almonds, pine kernels and pepper.
Pandolce: Genoese Christmas cake, but made from a bread dough and flavoured with anis and orange flour water.
Panettone: Enriched fruit bread, made over three days.
Pignolata, from Messina: Small "drops" of sweetened dough stuck together to look like pine cones.
Pinocatte: Toasted pine kernels bound together with boiled sugar.
Schiacciata della vendemmia: Bread pie filled with fresh grapes - intended to celebrate the grape harvest, but made for festive occasions. Italians put aside grapes to bake it at Christmas (see recipe).
Struffoli: See recipe.
Zaleti: Venetian cornmeal biscuits with rum-flavoured sultanas and lemon zest.
