Ricciarelli

Ricciarelli are almond biscuits made without butter and, in the traditional recipe, without flour. Blanched sweet almonds are ground fine with sugar, bound with whipped egg white, scented with orange zest and vanilla, shaped into blunt-cornered ovals, laid on a sheet of edible wafer paper, coated in icing sugar and baked briefly at low heat.

The defining detail is the surface. The icing sugar dries into a thin crust during a rest before baking, then splits as the biscuit rises, leaving a network of white fissures. Underneath, the paste stays moist and slightly elastic, a texture closer to marzipan than to a cookie.

Since 2010 the name Ricciarelli di Siena has been a Protected Geographical Indication. The rules set a minimum almond content, prescribe the shape and the wafer base, and prohibit added fats. That is why a real one costs more than twice as much as a generic almond biscuit.

Intensely almond, sweet but not cloying, with a citrus lift from orange zest and a faint bitter-almond edge in the background. There is no butter and no flour, so nothing dilutes the almond: it is essentially marzipan that has been aerated and baked.

The eating experience runs in two stages. First a thin, sugary crust that shatters, then a dense, damp, faintly chewy centre that clings slightly to the teeth. A well-made one is still soft in the middle a week later.

Compared with a French macaron it is coarser, less sweet and far more almond-forward; compared with an amaretto it is softer, milder and much less bitter.

Eat them as they are, at the end of a meal, one or two per person, because they are more filling than their size suggests. December is the traditional season, but Sienese pastry shops make them all year.

They take a short dip in Vin Santo well, but keep it short. Unlike Prato's cantucci, which are engineered for soaking, ricciarelli are already moist and will collapse in about ten seconds.

Crumbled, they make an excellent base for a no-bake cheesecake or the crunch layer in a semifreddo, bringing almond perfume that plain biscuits cannot. Scattered over vanilla ice cream or panna cotta they beat any commercial nut brittle.

Chocolate-dipped versions are common outside Siena. They are pleasant, but the chocolate buries the orange and the almond, so taste the plain ones first.

If they have hardened in the tin, five minutes in a 100 C oven and a full cooling restores most of the softness.

Almost every producer wraps them one by one in cellophane, and that wrapper is doing real work: it holds in the moisture that keeps the centre chewy. Boxed and unopened they sit in a cool dry cupboard on the producer date, usually three to six months out. Once a wrapper is opened the biscuit starts giving that moisture up to the air, the inside firms within a day or two and the icing sugar on top sets into a crust, so anything unwrapped belongs in an airtight tin rather than on a plate.

A damp kitchen does the opposite and is just as visible: the icing sugar draws in water, turns glassy and translucent and the surface goes sticky. The fridge combines cold and humidity and produces both problems at once. Over several months the almond oil oxidises and the aroma flattens from marzipan towards something duller. They freeze two to three months still wrapped, and thawing them in the wrapper keeps the condensation on the cellophane instead of the sugar.

A ricciarello is a plump diamond or elongated oval, five to seven centimetres long and thick enough to dome, buried under a heavy dusting of icing sugar. The surface should be crazed with a fine network of cracks that opens through the sugar as it bakes: a smooth uncracked top usually means a different formula. Inside it is soft and chewy the whole way through, and that is the single clearest test, because the Sienese almond biscuits it gets shelved beside are crisp. The dough is ground almonds, sugar and egg white, with a hint of bitter almond or orange, and traditionally no butter and no flour.

Abroad the usual mix-ups are with amaretti, whether the crisp Saronno kind in twisted paper or the soft Sassello type, with French macarons, and with plain marzipan sweets. Cheaper versions lean on apricot kernel paste or a large share of flour, and they read denser and less aromatic. The protected name is Ricciarelli di Siena IGP. In Siena they run 20 to 30 euro a kilo; abroad a 150 to 200g box is £5 to £9 or $10 to $18.

In Siena, buy them loose by weight from a pastry shop rather than pre-boxed: 28 to 42 euro per kilo, which works out at roughly one euro per biscuit, and they will be days rather than weeks old. Gift boxes of 200 to 300 grams cost 8 to 14 euro.

Abroad, Italian delis, Eataly and online importers carry boxed ricciarelli, mostly from October to January. Expect 18 to 32 dollars per pound in the US and 20 to 35 pounds per kilo in the UK.

Read the ingredient list: almonds should be first. Flour, vegetable oil, margarine or glucose syrup near the top means an imitation. Look for the Ricciarelli di Siena IGP mark, which is the quickest single check.

Good blanched sweet almonds cost 12 to 20 euro per kilo wholesale and make up more than a third of the biscuit's weight, so arithmetic rules out anything sold at 9 euro per kilo. Price is a genuine signal here.

Siena inside the walls is the place: the historic pasticcerie along Via di Città and Banchi di Sopra sell them loose. Buying four from two or three different shops in an afternoon costs almost nothing and is the fastest way to learn how much they vary.

Around the province (Monteriggioni, Colle di Val d'Elsa, Montalcino, Montepulciano) bakeries make them to the same recipe at slightly lower prices, often alongside their own Vin Santo.

December is the moment. Sienese windows fill with ricciarelli, panforte, cavallucci and copate, and the whole quartet gets served together at the end of Christmas meals, each with a different texture.

Florence and Lucca stock them easily, though usually as packaged Sienese product. The difference between a two-day-old ricciarello and a two-week-old one is obvious, so buy them at source if you can.