32 Types Of Italian Cookies You'll Want To Bake

We've never met a cookie we didn't like. And the same goes for any cookie from the delicious genre of Italian baking. Food is an important part of Italian cultural traditions and is used to symbolize a variety of pivotal life milestones, holidays, and family gatherings (via SF Gate). For Italians, food symbolizes love and care — that's why it's not uncommon to see Italian families across the world eating Sunday pasta dinners with friends and loved ones. And there's no better way to finish off a meal than with a sweet cookie.

When working with Italian cookie recipes, you'll want to be sure to first read the recipe and the number of cookies you can expect. Many Italian recipes make upwards of five dozen cookies, so unless you have friends and family to share these cookies with, you may be eating Christmas cookies until May. Here are some of our favorite Italian cookies that you can make at home.

The phrase "Italian cookie" often conjures the image of a delightful biscotti. This thick cookie gets its shape from being sliced off a dough log after it has been baked. Then, the pieces of biscotti are re-baked to ensure a crispy exterior that is almost bread-like.

Biscotti can come in almost any flavor. In the fall, you may try baking a pumpkin biscotti flavored with pumpkin puree and warm pie spices. For a more adult take on the biscotti, try making honey biscotti with halva for deep undertones of cardamon, the sweetness of honey, and the melt-on-the-mouth flavor of a coconut butter glaze.

Chocolate hazelnut spread lovers — this one is for you. The Baci di Dama cookies are endemic to Italy's Piedmont region. They're made with an almond-flavored dough and filled with a layer of chocolate and hazelnut spread. You might also hear these cookies referred to as "lady's kisses" because the chocolate layer is sealed with a "kiss" of the other piece of cookie. These cookies are smaller than golf balls, so they are the perfect cookie to take on the go or enjoy in the company of good friends and family.

The proper Italian rainbow cookie requires some delicate construction work. The cookie is layered to resemble the Italian flag with a layer of red-dyed cake atop a layer of plain cake and subsequent green-dyed cake. Once the cake is stacked and sandwiched with layers of jam, it is covered in a chocolate shell, cooled, and trimmed into small rectangular bites.

This cookie is deceptively easy — just make sure you have a flat-edged measuring tool nearby to ensure all of your cookies are equally sized.

Pignoli are pine nuts, and this special ingredient is the perfect nutty component for an authentic Italian cookie. The pignoli cookie is kept light and deliciously soft with the addition of almond paste, sugar, and egg whites. Almond paste is a critical ingredient because of its coarse texture, minimal sweetness, and nuttiness. The egg whites are used to give the cookie its stability while the pine nuts add a nutty flavor and distinguished crunch.

Southern Italian Easter cookies, also known as taralli dolci di Pasqua, are sturdy, frosted cookies that get most of their sweetness from an icing layer. The first thing you'll likely notice about these cookies is the sheer size; the cookie is formed by wrapping an 8-inch log of dough around itself. Once the icing is applied, taralli dolci di Pasqua are regularly decorated with sprinkles of varying colors to match the Easter season.

Torcetti are the ideal crisp biscuit cookie for afternoon teatime. The torcetti is loved for its hard, bread-like exterior and soft cookie-like interior.

Torcetti are some of the easiest cookies you can make at home. You'll just need all-purpose flour, sifted icing sugar, a leavening agent (like baking soda), cream, and eggs (for color). After the dough is rolled out into a log, it is wrapped around itself, decorated with a garnish of cane sugar, and baked.

Cuccidati Siciliani are Italian cookies stuffed with a fig filling. Per their name, the cuccidati emerged from the island of Sicily. The filling of these small cookies combines soaked figs, marsala wine, dark chocolate, and other dried fruits and nuts for a powerful, almost savory flavor. The sweetened dough casing and confectionary glaze elevate the sweetness of the cookie — meaning that you get almost every kind of flavor in each bite.

Tetù, or Sicilian chocolate spiced cookies, are commonly sweetened with chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, among other ingredients. There are some regional differences in how tetù are prepared. Some variations on the recipe may include chopped walnuts or almonds, while others omit the nutty flavors. They're easily recognizable from their dark color and are sometimes referred to as "meatball cookies" in the United States. They're commonly topped with a vanilla glaze and colored sprinkles.

Italian pinch cookies are also known as pizzicati, bow tie cookies, or envelope cookies. These buttery cookies are easily identified for the pinching shape at the center of a sea of jam, fruit spreads, or nut butters. The cookie itself resembles a thin jam thumbprint with a soft, buttery flavor and is often eaten around holidays or served with coffee. You can use a variety of jams for pizzicati, but the most common are apricot or raspberry.

Italian butterhorn cookies resemble thin, long cinnamon rolls. These cookies are flavored with cinnamon sugar and walnuts, thus resulting in a sweet nutty bliss that pairs well with coffee or tea. The ingredients may be simple, but the process isn't. The rolling technique is critical to making sure the outside of the cookie crisps up while the inside maintains a soft, pillowy, and delicate texture, per CiCi's Italian Cookies. If they're not quite sweet enough, a light dusting of powdered sugar will do the trick.

Struffoli are honey-covered dough cookie balls shaped in a ring. This holiday dessert, usually eaten around Christmas, has roots in the Campania region of Italy (but some historians argue the dish has connections to Greece). Traditionally, the balls are flavored with anise extract, but we recommend using Grand Mariner instead for a more pungent citrus undertone.

After the dough balls are fried and coated in a honey syrup, the plate is usually decorated with a bit of powdered sugar and sprinkles. These treats are perfect for a party because of the small shape of the individual fried dough balls.

Uncinetti are yet another type of Italian Easter cookie. These, however, are similar to sugar cookies — just with the addition of a zesty lemon glaze. Uncinetti translates to "crochet" in English, which makes sense, as these cookies are shaped by wrapping the dough into a spiral (similar to a cinnamon roll). The dough isn't overly sweet, so despite their festive glaze and adornment of colored sprinkles, these cookies are usually eaten around breakfast rather than dessert.

If making a homemade cannoli isn't your idea of a fun time (believe us, it's harder than it looks), you may consider cookie-ifying this traditional Italian dessert. Cannoli cookies are flavored with pistachios, chocolate chips, orange zest, cinnamon, and nutmeg. The cookie derives its moisture from ricotta and can be decorated with powdered sugar. Although some folks might say it's cheating, we just think combining a cannoli and a cookie is just getting the best of both worlds.

The esse di Raveo (the "S" of Raveo) is named after the small town of Raveo in the province of Udine, per Camelia. These Italian biscuits are made of simple sugar cookie ingredients like flour, butter, eggs, sugar, and salt, then shaped into an "S" shape before baking. Some recipes flavor the cookies with a bit of lemon zest as well. This cookie is commonly eaten for breakfast because of its mild, sweet taste that can be easily softened in coffee or tea.

Much like esse di Raveo, susamielli are regularly baked with a distinctive "S' shape. But unlike its northern cousin, Susamielli are Neopolitan and are flavored with the addition of cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Honey, however, is the key ingredient here. Its sweetness is the clear focal point but doesn't overshadow the other ingredients. During the holiday season, it's common to see the cookies dunked into coffee or sweet wine, which helps soften the susamielli's hard texture.

Ricciarelli are a bit odd looking, but like many other Italian cookies, sport a characteristic dusting of powdered sugar to up their sweetness factor. They're flavored with both bitter and sweet almond paste, sugar, and egg whites. The strongest flavor of these cookies, though, usually comes from candied orange peel and the aforementioned icing sugar. Ricciarelli are usually enjoyed with wine around Christmastime.