(upbeat music) - The Piedmont region of Italy, located up north along the borders of France and Switzerland, are known for many sophisticated foods, including lush red wines,
fresh truffles in the fall, and these little hazelnut
chocolate cookies called baci di dama,
which means ladies kisses. And that's what Bridget's gonna
show us how to cook today. - Yeah, I'm not gonna show you how to kiss but these little cookies
are absolutely delightful. They're a little crumbly,
a little fragile, hazelnut and chocolate. And these are tiny cookies. So we're gonna make a lot of them. We need to streamline the process. So first thing, we're
using a food processor. We're starting off with hazelnuts. Now these have been toasted and skinned. There's a little bit
of skin still on there, that's actually good. They're a little bit dry those skins, and they're going to
help to keep the dough from being a little too fragile. - Oh, cool. - So these have cooled off
and I can process them. These are 3/4 cup of hazelnuts. And we're not gonna
process these on their own. So I've got some flour. This is all purpose flour, 2/3 cup. That's 3 1/2 ounces. It's always a good idea to
weigh your dry ingredients. So we have here some sugar. This is a 1/3 cup of
sugar or 2 1/3 ounces. Just granulated sugar. We're letting that hazelnut flavor shine. And a wee bit of salt. We've got an 1/8 of a
teaspoon of table salt. I'm gonna process this for
about 20 to 25 seconds. And what I'm looking for is the nuts to be really finely ground. We don't want any large pieces in there because that's where the cookies could literally start to crumble. All right, let's give
this a look-see in here. All right, I just wanted
to give you an idea of how finely ground that is. If we kept the nuts in the larger pieces, be way too fragile. So now butter, this is six tablespoons of unsalted butter here
cut into 1/2 inch cubes. And this is very cold
because this is going to help us cut in the butter
into the flower mixture. - More like a pastry than a cookie dough. - Exactly, kinda like a shortbread. And now I'm going to pulse it in. So between 20 to 25 pulses until it's starting to come together. We want some of those oils to be released, the butter to be really well incorporated so that we can start to turn
this into a proper dough. Right now it's just a crumbly mixture. And I'm just going to bring this together. Just kneed it until it forms
kind of a cohesive mass, really ensuring that any streaks
of flour are incorporated. I'm going to place this in
an eight inch baking pan. I've got a little bit
of parchment in here. It's just going to make
release a little easier. This is gonna make one big cookie. Now we're using this pan as kind of a mold so that we can get really
even portions later on when we go to make our
32 little baci di dama. And to make 32 baci di dama, which has two halves, you
gotta make 64 cookies. - Oh, that's a lot of cookies. - That's a lot of cookies. So I'm just taking my fingertips
and pressing this out. Get these edges pretty well pressed here. - [Julia] That looks perfect, nicely done. - Now we do want the dough to firm up. So I'm gonna go pop this in the freezer. - Okey-doke! (upbeat music) - All right, this is really
firm, 10 minutes in the freezer. Now we need to get it out of the pan and it might take a little gentle coaxing. Just wanna take a paring knife and run it around the edges of the pan. Or you can use a bench scraper. All right, Let's see if it comes out, if not, I'll just go back
in there with a knife. There we go! And now, because we don't wanna eat paper, so let's get rid of the parchment here. You see, this is totally flat, right? It's nice, it's gonna be
easy to portion things out. So we need to cut this
into 64 little pieces. - That's eight by eight. - That's eight by eight, exactly. Before I cut through, I like to score it, so that would be two. And then half of each half. And then each quarter in
half again to make eights. Now I haven't committed at this point, so I can always go back in and score again if I think that the lines aren't great. That's looking pretty good.
- Good to me! - All right, so I'm gonna go ahead and make these cuts right through. We're gonna do the same again. So I need to cut these
eight strips into 64 pieces. So again, same thing. I'm gonna do a little scoring. So now I can go ahead and make my cuts. This is so much faster than
just balling up by sight. It's just a great way
to portion things out. Ba-ba!
- Well done! - So now we are going to
roll these into little balls, and I'm gonna need your help. So we're gonna start
off with 32 little balls on each sheet pan. - Okay.
- That's great. You just take a little bit of the dough, warm it up in your hands if you need to, and then roll them into little balls. All right, let's get cracking
and roll out the rest of the 32 onto the sheet. Again, they're not gonna spread, but we do wanna give them a little space so they can bake evenly. So before we roll out the rest of these we're gonna bake these
one sheet at a time. And they're going to go
into 325 degree oven. We're not looking for
a lot of browning here. We want them to stay kind of blonde, just maybe a little toasty,
but they should look set. Only gonna take about 20 minutes. And I wanna rotate the sheet
pan halfway through baking. (upbeat music) Look at our sweet little kisses here. Aren't they great? So these are all cooled, still on the pan. You wanna let them cool completely. Usually takes at least 30 minutes. And now we need to take the little halves and turn them into a
sweet little sandwich. So we're gonna need something to put in between those two cookies. How about chocolate? So I've got here two ounces
of bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped is just
going to help with melting. Gonna melt this at 50%
power in the microwave, just until it's melted. I'll stir it every 20 or 30 seconds, but it might take just about a minute. All right, this is looking good. - Nice and smooth!
- It's melted. - Mm, looks good.
- Looks good. We want it to thicken just a little bit. So cool down slightly to about 80 degrees, that's how we're going to
know that it's thick enough that we can use it as a mortar in between our two little kiss halves. 80 degrees.
- Nice job. - Pastry's all about precision. - It's true. - All right, so let's move this up here. We're going to flip over every other row. And you can do it any way you want. You can do two rows in a row,
but I kinda like the fact that there's sandwiches are
right next to each other. - I see, precision.
- Exactly. Now we wanna use a precise
amount for our filling. We've got a 1/4 teaspoon here. So a 1/4 teaspoon on each cookie just to make sure it's not overfilled. All right, just right in the center. And it's slightly thickened, but still going to be able
to pour it onto that cookie. Scrape it right into the center. - Oh, nice.
- It's not gonna go anywhere. - [Julia] It's not
gonna run out the sides. - And I like to start away
from me and work towards me, especially when I'm
working with chocolate. Now these are great
little cookies of course, to eat on your own, but
they're so beautiful. They make great gifts. So I like to spend a little
bit of time doing this. This is one of those things
if your chocolate starts to set up a little bit or thicken, you can just pop it back in
the microwave for 10 seconds on 50% power and stir it again
until it's slightly looser. All right, let's get this
last one on this sheet here. And we can go ahead and work with these. I'm gonna need your help. So I just need you to
take one of the halves and squish it to get just a little bit, not too much to make
our little sandwiches. - [Julia] That is a very satisfying. - You should just see a little bit of the chocolate starting
to peak towards the edge, just like that. All right, so just
gonna top this one here, and then we're gonna do the
same thing on this second sheet. Every other row chocolate, assembly. And then you wanna let them set up for at least 15 minutes before we eat. But we are close. We have an adorable boat
here of ladies kisses. Our baci di dama are
all cooled, assembled, and ready for you to eat. And it's lovely with a cup of coffee. - [Julia] Oh, I can't wait. - Mm!
- Mm! It's hitting me right
here and making me smile, those flavors of hazelnut and chocolate. The cookie little crumbly, little chewy, a lot like shortbread. - I love cookies like
this with a cup of coffee Espresso would be great. Cup of coffee is absolutely fine. And what's great about the cup of coffee is it gives you a little
platter to put 85,000, all right, I'll put a couple back. - [Julia] It looked like a
teeny amount of chocolate when we were assembling the cookies, but it's the perfect amount to marry those two halves together. - [Bridget] And believe it or
not, these are built to last. - Not in my house! - You can assemble these and store them at room
temperature for 10 days, and they're still really good. - They'd be good for a cookie swap. All though, I don't
know I'd wanna swap them for anything else. Bridget, these are magical, thank you. - You bet. - To make these sweet
little Italian cookies, make a dough using toasted
hazelnuts in the food processor. Press the dough into a square baking pan to make portioning easy. And assemble two cookies into a confectionary kiss
using melted chocolate. From "America's Test Kitchen," a whimsical recipe for baci di dama. How many of these, 32? - 32, well, what's that one over there? - Thanks for watching
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