Italians love their sweets, and with three kids travelling around Italy, we had plenty of opportunity to sample many of them.
Nutella
Along with the Italian’s obsession with bread is also an obsession with Nutella! I know they invented it, but they really do take it to the next level, being such a passionate lot. Nutella is found in so many different desserts and even breakfast options.
Spread on bread or toast at breakfast, inside croissants, crepes, rotollo cakes (as above), on pizza, inside other pastries, as a snack with crostini sticks, gelato, and the list goes on…
Baci Chocolates
Another chocolate product from Italy is Baci, a perfect gift for celebrating mother’s day in Italy!
Chocolate Salami
Our Italian exchange teacher who stayed with us last year made us some chocolate salami while with us. So when we arrived and found the local version we had to try it. It is made with an uncooked chocolate mix (cocoa powder, condensed milk, flour and sugar) with crushed vanilla biscuits in it. Rolled and sliced to look like salami. Very sweet and delicious. Federica also made us some tiramasu, which we never tried in Italy, but another Italian classic dessert.
Canoli
Canoli is a rolled crisp pastry shell, filled with a sweet ricotta mixture inside. They can be sprinkled with nuts, or chocolate, and are also very sweet and super filling.
Croissants
Croissants may be traditionally a French food item, however we found many throughout Italy too, mostly filled with chocolate or marmalade as a sweet option. Italians commonly have them for breakfast with their coffee.
Like croissants but not, we also tried these pastries filled with chocolate.
Gelato
Then of course, there is the most important sweet, gelato! This is found on every street corner, more concentrated in tourist areas, and very handy as bribery to get the kids to complete ‘dad’s waking tours”!
The range of flavours was usually overwhelming, with everything from all types of fruit, multitudes of chocolate varieties, pistachio or hazelnut, tiramasu and even licorice.
Candy Pizza!
And the award for the ultimate Italian sweet is the candy pizza.