Food - Bee Wilson gets her lips around some very sweet Italian pastries
To look in the window of an Italian pasticceria or cake shop is to feel one's fillings twinge and one's heart lift. A side effect of exploring the great Italian cities is that one becomes overwhelmed by all the art and antiquity, from the delicate humanity of a Giotto fresco to the gloomy dignity of the Roman forum. It is quite a relief, sometimes, to escape to the vulgar pleasures of the pasticceria, where sugar-dusted pastries are piled up and sold by weight. There may be shortbread circles flavoured with cocoa and drenched in caster sugar; sweet crescents dipped in chocolate on both ends; currant-stuffed squares; cherry-topped swirls; flaked almond splodges dusted in icing sugar; and brashly coloured marzipan fruits made to a surreal scale so that pears and strawberries are, miraculously, the same size. In Siena and Florence, wedges of black panforte glisten with candied fruit, almonds, spices and honey. Little pastry tart-shells may be filled with raspberry or apricot jam and showered in pine nuts. If the French patisserie is, ultimately, a temple to the powers of butter, the Italian pasticceria is a shrine to the delights of sugar.
I was told recently by a talented linguist that there is no obvious way, in Italian, to say "I'm full". When visiting a pasticceria, one can believe it. Too sweet? What do you mean, too sweet? The concept makes no sense! How could one ever have too many glace cherries or too much jam? My friend the linguist offers the thesis that this is because Italy is still, in some ways, a peasant nation, grateful for all the food it can get, especially sugar and meat. But there is also something in the Italian temperament - or so it seems to this outsider - that revels in the overmuch. No superlative can go too far; no compliment can be too fulsome; no woman can appear blonde enough or made-up enough, especially when on TV. And so it is with Italian biscuits, these essentially comic creations that push the sweet tooth to its very limit. They may not be as fine as the best French pastries, but Italian sweetmeats are often more joyous. When taken in moderation (which I suppose defeats my point) with a cup of caffe latte, they can be delicious, especially the more almondy confections.
Italian biscuits now have a powerful advocate in the form of Nigella Lawson. You may not have heard, but she has a new book out about baking, called How to be a Domestic Goddess (Chatto & Windus, £25). In it, she gives a number of life-enhancing instructions for pasticcini, from white diamond-shaped ricciarelli to cute little chocolate circles and lemon curd-filled "gems". Lawson even gives an excellent recipe for "Italian biscuits", by which she means the piped rosettes topped with glace cherries you find in almost every pasticceria. She observes, rightly, that when you buy them in Italy, they can actually "tend towards challenging dryness and sweetness". The answer is to make them at home, where you can achieve all of the comic delight with a little less of the sugar. In which spirit, I offer a recipe (not in Lawson's book) for another, exuberantly named Italian biscuit from Piedmont.
For baci di dama (lady's kisses), you will need: 150g ground almonds, 150g tipo 00 flour (the same kind you use to make pasta), 150g caster sugar (flavoured with vanilla, if you like), 150g softened unsalted butter, the grated zest of half a lemon, 3 medium yolks and 75g good dark chocolate.
Preheat the oven to 190 C. Work all the ingredients except the chocolate together until you have a smooth paste. Put in little balls in a baking tray and bake until golden (about 12 minutes, but check sooner). When the biscuits are cool, sandwich them with melted chocolate. They are called lady's kisses because they look - supposedly - like pairs of lips.
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