Assorted Amaretti Cookie Tin

Make the holidays a little sweeter with this exclusive Giadzy tin containing an assortment of our favorite cookies from Chiostro di Saronno. These northern Italian bakers are the original makers of amaretti—Giada’s favorite little cookies—and when it came to picking one of their delicious varieties to include in our Christmas tin, we just couldn’t decide! This retro-styled tin inspired by childhood memories contains their classic crunchy amaretti, soft amaretti, chocolate-covered amaretti, and fragrant lemon amaretti.

As the story goes, amaretti were first baked in Saronno during the Middle Ages by a poor young couple who wanted to honor the visiting cardinal of Milano. They had very little in the cupboard, and came up with a simple combination of sugar, egg whites, and almond-scented apricot kernels to create these sweet morsels. Today, amaretti are topped with sparkling pearl sugar and wrapped in pairs in colorful tissue paper twists. True to the original recipe, these little cookies are chewy, light, and crisp—and naturally gluten-free!

The Lazzaroni family have been producing amaretti using traditional recipes since 1719, first as a small local baker, and then becoming the first company in Italy to produce cookies for commercial sale in 1888. Today, their Chiostro di Saronno brand is the custodian to the amaretti archive, which is kept in the cloisters of a 14th-century church in Saronno. The archive includes cookie tins dating back hundreds of years, all hand-decorated with glamorous Italian scenes, alluring women, wistful landscapes, dreamy Christmas vignettes, and more.