Scroccadenti

The name tells you everything. Scroccadenti means 'tooth-crackers,' and the mountain people of the Emilian Apennines do not exaggerate. These are cookies meant to be dipped, softened in sweet wine or strong coffee until they yield just enough to eat without incident. To bite into one straight from the tin is to understand why Italians named them so.

These belong to the tradition of twice-baked cookies that stretches across Italy: biscotti in Tuscany, cantucci in Prato, and here in the Apennine villages of Emilia, scroccadenti. The method is the same everywhere because it works. You bake the dough in logs, slice them while warm, then bake the slices again until they are dry clear through. The result keeps for weeks in a tin, which mattered when village women baked once and made it last.

What distinguishes the Emilian version is restraint. No chocolate. No dried fruit. Just flour, eggs, sugar, almonds, and a whisper of lemon. The almonds are left whole, skin on, because that is how they have always been made. Refinement is not the point. Durability and honest flavor are.