No lunch or dinner is complete without dessert. Whether is a tantalizing biscotti, a luscious pastry, or elaborate cake - dessert is ato a meal what an epilogue is to a play.

The time you sink your teeth into a scrumptious Italian dessert, you can thank medieval knights for the priviledge. Cake and pastry making as we know it today originated in Venice during the Middle Ages, when Venetian maritime crusaders returned from the Orient with newly observed cooking methods and foreign foods, like sugar cane, honey, nuts and spices. These additions, when combined with the already existing Venetian desserts, created the prototypes for modern day pastry.

Once the Italians tasted these premiere confections, they wanted more complicated creations, and the demands led to lavish displays of extravagant desserts, known today as Venetian tables. Because only specialists could satisfy their gastronomic yearnings, a new class of culinary aristocrat, the pastry chef, came into being.

However hard we search though, we can not say we have tracked down the origin of Italy's finest dessert. It's not in the North, or the South or the Islands. It's not in Venice or Naples, in Rome, Palermo or Puglia. It is in all these places, because it is everywhere. Desserts whether simple or elaborate are created in the style of " la famiglia " (the family). There are no high or low roads in the Italian desserts. All roads lead to the home, to " la cucina di casa."

Since 1941 Caffe Aurora has aspired to to continue this tradition. Time tested recipes are the backbone of our family " pasticceria " (pastry shop). Our desserts are created daily, using only the finest ingredients and freshest fruits available. The judgement of exquisite pastry is an acquired talent, one in which you may readily indulge, because Caffe Aurora continues to perpetuate the rich Italian tradition to produce the finest desserts.