During a Valentine’s Day visit to Eataly, among the gourmet and artisanal chocolates, I spotted the old standby Baci Perugina.  Of course they are ubiquitous these days and certainly anything but artisanal (Perugina is now owned by Nestle) but they have a certain nostalgia and are, in fact, good. When that craving hits for something sweet and chocolatey, that bite of Bacio (singular!) hits the spot.  Baci are iconic in Italy:  advertisements for Baci, both print and television are part of modern cultural history.  I looked up the story behind Baci and found to my surprise that they were created in 1922 by Luisa Spagnoli – the Luisa Spagnoli who was the founder of the fashion house.  The connection?  It turns out the enterprising Luisa was the wife of one of the founders of the Perugina chocolate company.  Legend has it that Luisa came up with Baci because she was trying to figure out what to do with the leftover fragments of hazelnuts that had been used in other confectionery. She mixed the fragments with chocolate, added a whole hazelnut to each candy and covered it all in dark chocolate.  Thus the irregularly shaped confection, with its bump of hazelnut at the top resembling a knuckle on a closed fist.  Its original name was the somewhat inelegant “cazzotto” – roughly, “punch” or “wallop.”  Giovanni Buitoni, another of the owners of Perugina, and rumored to be Luisa’s lover, had the clever idea of renaming the candy Baci.  But there’s more.  As anyone who regularly eats Baci knows, also contained in the foil wrapping of each candy is a small paper with a kiss/love-inspired message written on it.  These tiny cartouches were added in the 1930s by the artistic director of Perugina at that time.  He was inspired, apparently, by the story that the lovers Luisa and Giovanni would exchange love notes which they would pass to each other hidden in the various confections produced by Perugina.  Interesting what you learn when you research the history of a chocolate candy!