Baci di Dama

Ingredients

• 200 g Tonda Gentile delle Langhe hazelnuts, toasted, skins removed, ground to a very fine flour
• 200 g unsalted butter, cold, cut into small pieces
• 200 g caster sugar
• 200 g plain flour
• For the filling
• 100 g dark chocolate, 70% cocoa solids, finely chopped
• To finish
• 1 tbsp icing sugar, for dusting

Method

1. 1
   Toast the hazelnuts in a dry pan or moderate oven until the skins blister. Rub in a cloth to remove the skins, then grind in a food processor to a very fine flour — no coarse fragments should remain. The ground meal must approach the consistency of flour; stop before the oils release and the meal turns pasty. The texture of the finished cookie is decided here.
2. 2
   Combine the ground hazelnuts, butter, sugar, and flour. Work the mixture until it coheres into a smooth dough — the four components are equal in weight, a ratio that produces the characteristic crumbly tenderness. Wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes; the dough will firm to a consistency that rolls cleanly without sticking.
3. 3
   Roll the chilled dough into balls of approximately 1–1.5 cm diameter — each finished bacio must be barely 3 cm across when assembled, so the raw balls must be small and uniform. Place on a lined baking sheet with a little space between each. The surface of each ball should be smooth and perfectly round.
4. 4
   Bake at a moderate heat until the cookies are barely golden on the base and set to the touch on top — they must not colour to brown. Overbaking drives off moisture and produces hardness in place of the required crumble. Remove from the oven while they appear only just done; they firm as they cool on the tray.
5. 5
   Allow the cookies to cool completely on the tray before moving them. They are fragile while warm. Once cold, they should feel dry and firm to a light press but shatter with only slight resistance — crunchy rather than crumbly indicates overbaking.
6. 6
   Melt the dark chocolate over a bain-marie until fully liquid and smooth. Place a small dot — no more than a few millimetres — on the flat side of one cookie, then press the flat side of a second cookie gently against it. The chocolate layer must be thin: it is a flavour bridge, not a filling. Set the assembled baci on a rack and leave undisturbed until the chocolate is completely firm.
7. 7
   Dust lightly with icing sugar before serving. The finished baci keep well in a sealed tin for up to one week.