Ordinare caffè e dolcetti al bar

What is a “frollino” in Italian?

A frollino is the small, crumbly, buttery biscuit made from pasta frolla — Italy’s sweet shortcrust pastry of flour, butter, egg and sugar. It is the everyday cookie Italians dunk in coffee or milk at breakfast, often flavored alla vaniglia (vanilla). Ordering “un frollino alla vaniglia” at the bar marks it as pasticceria secca: dry pastry, the shelf-stable biscuit category as opposed to cream-filled cakes.

The name traces to frollo, “tender / crumbly,” and the verb frollare (to make tender, to age). That same root gives pasta frolla, the dough behind crostate (jam tarts) and countless cookies. So a frollino is, literally, “a little tender thing” — its melt-in-the-mouth texture is built right into the word.