Jessika Pini
Typical sweets, that distinguish two countries in northern Italy, Borgotaro (Parma) and Pontremoli (Massa and Carrara), separated by the Apennines mountains, but connected by ancient streets. They are called ‘Amors’ and tell about a migration past experienced by a community of Protestant bakers and grocers who came from Swiss Engadine valley, in Graubünden canton.
Maurizio Steckli (in the photograph), a pastry chef, led them in ‘Val di Taro’ Valley in 1920. He decided to open his own production workshop at Borgotaro. In those years, Steckli also took over Pasticceria degli Svizzeri (Swiss’ pastry), which still exists, at Pontremoli. It had been opened in 1860 by other migrant families coming from Engadine.
Amors: two wafers enclosing a delicate butter cream. They are celebrated at Borgotaro every year in August (this year on 23rd August) in a party, during which the two confectioneries that produce them, ‘Steckli’, managed by Tagliavini Family, and ‘Costella and Murena’, offer them to the town.
Loacker wafers: For about ten years, the wafers have been provided by Loacker, an historical Italian family company, founded in 1925 and now in its third generation. It still produces wafer biscuits at 1,000 metres above sea level, in the heart of the Dolomites.
The cream 
is prepared with butter, milk, eggs, flour and sugar and has a very delicate consistency, given by the type of warm and then cold processing. It is fresh sweet, which is prepared from hour to hour, so that in contact with the cream the crispness of wafers does not disappear.
