Baci di dama (hazelnut cookies)

This is a regional recipe, from Pedimont, north-west of Italy. The translation of "Baci di dama" is "Kisses of a lady", and I read the first one was baked in 1893 in a city called Tortona. There are, of course, loads of recipes about these cookies , and this is mine ;)

Ingredients

100g chopped hazelnuts
100g all purpose flour
80g white sugar
80g butter
80g dark chocolate

Directions

Let the butter melt out of the fridge for about 1 hour. Add all the other ingredients but chocolate, and mix well with your hands. Put the dough, well covered, in the fridge for 2 hours.

Take the dough out, and start making little balls of dough with your hands. Put the on a buttered baking-pan, not to close one too close one to the other.

Put in the oven at 150°C, for about 8/10 minutes. Let them cool on the baking-pan.

Melt the chocolate into a bowl. Put some chocolate on the flat side of the cookie, then put another cookie over, so you will form a kind of sandwich. Do the same with the others. Let the chocolate cool, and serve.

Ricotta cheese pie

Ingredients

For the dough

• 250g all furpose flour
• 150g butter
• 2 egg yolks
• 100g white sugar

For the cream

• 300g unsalted ricotta cheese
• 150g icing sugar
• 1/2 lemon
• 2 eggs

Directions

Take a large bowl and put all the ingredients for the dough together. Mix well with your hands, trying to be as quick as possible. Make a ball with the dough, cover it an put in the fridge.

In another bowl, put the ricotta cheese, and crush it with a fork. Then, add the sugar and mix well with a mixer. (or with a hand whisk)
Add the egg yolks, and mix well.
Squeeze the lemon, and grate the skin, and put together in the ricotta cream. Mix gently with a spoon. In a little bowl or mug, whip the white of the eggs, until they rise. Add to the cream.

Take the dough, cut 3/4 of it, and form a circle with the rolling pin. Move this circle into a cake pan, and pierce the base a bit with the fork.

Pour the cream in, flatter it a bit with a spoon. Decorate with the rest of the dough.

Put into the oven at 170°C, for about 30/40 min.

Serve it cool.