Cookie Heaven

Baci di Dama

Recently I subscribed to a photo blog to get better at taking pictures. When I received the latest post of the blog yesterday it contained beautiful pictures, and also a recipe for little italian cookies. They are made with lots of hazelnuts and filled with chocolate or Nutella and are called Baci di Dama which means "Lady's kisses".  Despite my hazelnut allergy I knew immediately that I had to make these cookies as soon as possible . So I went off to the supermarket the next morning to get the hazelnuts. Unfortunately I had to visit several supermarkets to find them  - it seemed to be a bad harvest last fall. But the effort was well worth it.

The dough came together quickly and I used my small ice cream scoop to form the little dough balls.
By the time the cookies were cold enough to spread them with the chocolate,  I ran out of  time,  so I put them in a container waiting for me to have some free time.

Later that day, when I was ready to finish them, I opened the container and half of the cookies were already gone. I had no clue how that happened....
With or without chocolate these cookies are incredibly good, so start your diet next week and go to the store to get some nuts.

Baci di Dama
(adapted from Dario Milano)

• 300 g all purpose flour
• 250 g butter, softened
• 250 g sugar
• 250 g hazelnuts, grounded
• 200 g dark chocolate

Sift the flour and set aside. Make sure the butter is soft, you can use the microwave, but it's just easier to leave the butter at room temperature for a couple of hours before it's needed. Incorporate all the ingredients by hand wokring the dough gently but quickly; this should only take a couple of minutes. Set the dough aside and cover it with cling wrap to prefent it from getting too dry. Aline a baking tray with greaseproof paper and preheat oven to 180 C. Start shaping the little spheres tryiing to keep their size as consistent as poxssible; if you want you can use a teaspoon or a small ice cream scooper. Bake the biscuits for 10 - 15 minutes or until they become lightly golden in colour, but not brown. Let the biscuits cool down at room temperature, in the meantime melt the chocolate over a simmering bain-marie or in the microwave. Allow the chocolate to cool down as well, it has to have the consistency of nutella (in faact you can use nutella for an even nuttier taste) Next, sandwich the biscuits two at a time using half a teaspoon of chocolate to glue them together.. Store the baci away in an air tight container and keep for up to 5 days - that's if you can resist eating the all batch in one go