Cortinovis

A pastry counter that reads like a boutique

The case is the argument here: mignon pastries lined up like jewellery, praline work beside them, and cakes that look designed before they look baked. Cortinovis presents itself as a refined boutique of sweets in Ranica, and the family framing is explicit, pastry as a passion carried across generations and innovation arrived at through tradition. The room is elegant and unhurried, closer to a boutique than a bakery counter. Gambero Rosso awarded it Tre Torte for 2026, which places it among Italy's strongest pastry shops.

Praline, mignon and the workshop behind them

The range is wider than a case of small cakes. Praline and house-made chocolate sit alongside lievitati, torte, pasticceria mignon, semifreddi, monoporzioni and pasticcini, with special-occasion cakes made to order. That last part is worth knowing before a birthday or a family lunch: the shop invites you to describe the event and the dessert you have in mind, then builds the cake around it. Seasonal baking is a fixed part of the rhythm rather than an add-on, and the sweet of the season changes with the calendar.

Panettone has its own programme

Festive leavened baking is treated as a house line in its own right, with panettone made the shop's own way and given a dedicated shop of its own rather than a corner of the counter at Christmas. For a first visit, the mignon is the quickest way to read the style: small formats, precise finish, several at once. Praline and the house chocolate take you into the other half of the workshop, while monoporzioni and semifreddi show the plated-dessert sensibility and the torte speciali show what happens when the shop is asked to celebrate something. Take a panettone if the season is right; it is the clearest single expression of what the workshop can do.