“Ladies’ kisses” - hazelnut biscuits

These biscuits have become so much part of Italian culinary tradition that we tend to overlook their local origin. Baci di dama are said to have come into being in the small town of Tortona in the province of Alessandria. Numerous cookery books attribute their creation to pastry cooks in Tortona. We know for sure that here towards the end of the last century, a few confectioners added these crumbly biscuits sandwiched together with chocolate, to their specialties. They soon became very popular, probably also thanks to their innovative silver paper wrapping which kept them fresh and fragrant for longer. At the beginning of the twentieth century, there are two confectioners competing against each other in Tortona: Zanotti and the Vercesi Brothers. Preferences of the townspeople are divided, but in 1903, the Vercesi brothers develop a “secret” recipe with chocolate and almonds instead of hazelnuts and vanilla and patent it. This is the beginning of golden baci packed in elegant art  nouveau boxes with a poem inside beginning: “Golden baci come from Tortona, the Vercesi brothers have created them...” These biscuits soon became very popular in the province as well as over Piedmont and Lombardy, this was probably also thanks to their chosen name “baci” (kisses) that soon became a target for witty jokes and amusing puns.