Baci di Dama (recipe from Theresa Murphy)

If required : toast and peel the hazelnut as follows. Lay the hazelnuts on a baking tray and bake them at 180°C for about 10 to 15 minutes, until the hazelnut start to turn golden and smell toasted. Get them out of the oven and check that the skin peels of easily (if not put them back into the oven). Then let them cool down for about 5 minutes (or until still warm but not burning hot). Pour them on a clean kitchen towel and rub the hazelnuts together until peeled.

In a food processor, ground the hazelnuts until very fine, like the consistency of coarse polenta.

Transfer the ground nuts to a mixing bowl and add the rice flour, cubed butter, sugar, salt. Mix with your hands until all ingredients are combined and you get a smooth dough that holds together. If not, knead until it does, or add a bit of liquid (water, milk, melted butter).

Divide the dough into three equal pieces and roll each piece into a cylinder of 2cm in diameter. Chill the dough logs in the fridge for a couple of hours, or in the freezer for 15 minutes.

Personally, I had to divide the dough into four pieces in order for them to fit in my fridge. Also, I used plastic wrap to shape each piece, because I found it helped a lot with the stickiness of the dough.

Preheat the oven to 160°C and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Working with on length of dough at a time (leaving the rest in the refrigerators), cut pieces of about 5 grams and roll them into balls that are placed on the baking tray, approx. 3 or more cm apart.

Bake the cookies for 10 to 14 minutes, rotating the baking tray midway during cooking, until the cookies are lightly golden. Let the cookies cool completely.

On a double boiler setup, melt the chocolate with the liquid cream. Put a chocolate chip-sized dollop of chocolate on the bottom of one cookie and take another cookie, and sandwich the two halves together. Proceed until all cookies are done.