Small squares of soft almond nougat coated in dark, milk and white chocolate on a dark lava-stone board, one piece cut open to show pale nougat studded with almonds and green pistachio

Brontedolci: The Nougat Workshop from Bronte, Sicily

September 29, 2026

Bronte is a town in the province of Catania, on the lava slopes of Mount Etna, and Brontedolci is the pastry workshop three of its sons built there. Antonino Caruso and the Bellitto brothers were childhood friends who spent years working in other people's pastry shops and bars. In 1997 they opened a small nougat workshop of their own. Brontoncini are its small bars of soft almond nougat coated in chocolate, and Brontedolci Brontoncini assorted soft nougat, 8.8 ounces (shop Brontedolci Brontoncini assorted soft nougat), is the producer's 250 gram format.

Three friends and a nougat workshop

The company's own history begins in the early 1970s. Caruso and the Bellitto brothers were then working in local pastry shops and bars, and they shared one ambition, to open a bakery of their own. By 1985 the Bellitto brothers were running a bar in Maletto, and Caruso had opened one in Bronte, a few kilometers away. They met up again years later, and in 1997 the three opened their own laboratory.

In 2008 the company moved to a new facility, a step it describes as going from the original small laboratory to a large pastry lab with modern machinery. Today it is based in Bronte's artisan zone on Viale Kennedy. In 2014 the founders' children joined the business, and the company describes the two generations as working side by side.

The range has grown well past torrone. It now counts about 40 products across panettoni and colombe, spreadable creams, croccanti, dried fruit, pastries, and pasta with pesto. The nougat catalog alone includes soft bars coated in dark chocolate or in white chocolate flavored with vanilla, lemon or orange, and torrone between wafers made with almond, orange or pistachio.

A pistachio town

Bronte lends its name to a protected pistachio. Pistacchio Verde di Bronte is an EU protected designation of origin grown in three municipalities: Bronte, Adrano and Biancavilla. The growers' consortium credits the Arabs with expanding pistachio growing in Sicily, and quotes an old account of wild trees being grafted into cultivated ones. It counts nearly 4,000 hectares of the 25,000-hectare Bronte territory as pistachio orchards on lava soil. According to the consortium, the harvest comes every two years, in odd-numbered years, and it is done entirely by hand. Pickers drop the fruit into containers carried on their shoulders, or shake the branches so it falls onto cloths spread under the trees. After hulling, the nuts dry in the sun for three to four days.

That is the landscape the workshop sits in, and pistachio runs through the Brontedolci range, from pistachio wafer nougats to a pistachio Brontoncini line. In the assorted Brontoncini box, though, almond carries the nougat and pistachio is the accent. The product page lists the nuts simply as Sicilian almonds and pistachios.

What is in a Brontoncino

Brontedolci describes the center as soft nougat made to the traditional Sicilian recipe with selected almonds. The declared ingredients are Sicilian almonds at 41 percent, sugar, Sicilian sulla honey, glucose syrup, pistachios at 5 percent, egg whites and natural vanilla flavoring. The chocolate coating makes up 30 percent of each piece. The allergens listed are almonds, pistachios, eggs, milk and soy lecithin.

The percentages turn into grams for a 250 gram box. The ingredient list doesn't say whether the almond and pistachio percentages refer to the nougat center or to the whole piece. The table below assumes the center.

Component	Declared share	In a 250 g box
Chocolate coating	30% of each piece	About 75 g
Nougat center	The remaining 70%	About 175 g
Sicilian almonds	41% (assumed of center)	About 72 g, roughly 29% of the whole box
Pistachios	5% (assumed of center)	About 9 g
Energy	527 kcal per 100 g	About 1,320 kcal per box; about 132 kcal per 25 g, a tenth of the box

Almonds are the first ingredient, listed ahead of sugar, so they are the largest single ingredient in the center by weight.

The honey that binds it

The honey in the center is Sicilian sulla. Sulla is a forage legume, Hedysarum coronarium. Unaapi, the Italian beekeepers' association, calls its honey a distinctly Italian monofloral, made mainly where sulla is still grown: Abruzzo, Molise, Calabria, Sicily and, to a lesser extent, Tuscany. It is pale, colorless to straw yellow when liquid and white to light beige once it crystallizes. Unaapi describes the flavor as moderately sweet and not very persistent, with notes of legumes, hay, fresh nuts, dates and, fittingly, nougat. Unaapi calls the honey delicate, balanced and non-invasive, and lists it among the honeys used to make hard torrone. Honey: The Complete Guide covers how monofloral honeys differ.

Seven coatings, and what to pour with each

The product page lists the Brontoncini assortment in seven coatings: vanilla, coffee, dark chocolate, orange, lemon, milk chocolate and white chocolate. The dark coating is at least 60 percent cocoa. The pairings below are suggestions for building a small plate from one box.

Coating	Serve it with
Dark chocolate	Espresso, or a small glass of port after dinner
Milk chocolate	Afternoon black tea or a milky coffee
White chocolate	Fresh berries, or alongside a soft fresh cheese
Vanilla	Cut into pieces over vanilla ice cream
Coffee	A cortado, or crumbled over affogato
Orange	A dessert wine, or a plate of fresh citrus segments
Lemon	Green tea, or a glass of something sparkling

Using the box

The simplest use is a few pieces on a plate after dinner, with coffee. Brontoncini also work as a finished dessert that needs no oven, the kind of plate collected in the Dessert Without Baking guide. Put them on a board with Antonio Mattei biscotti di Prato (shop Antonio Mattei biscotti di Prato), a few dried figs and a wedge of hard cheese. For a hot chocolate evening, set out the different coatings and let people choose, as in the hot chocolate bar winter party guide. Chopped with a sharp knife, the dark and coffee pieces make a quick topping for ice cream or a spoonful of mascarpone.

Because each piece is coated in chocolate, the box follows chocolate's storage rules: cool, dry and away from strong smells. The guide to why chocolate turns white and how to store it explains why a warm shelf or a trip in and out of the refrigerator dulls the coating. The producer's stated shelf life is 12 months.

The shop is at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, and products ship nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com.