When I was little, my parents often had a big red tin box of individually wrapped Amaretti di Sarrono cookies—gifts from my Aunt Linda, I think. We all loved them, delicious with ice cream (recommended to accompany red wine, but I didn't try that until much later). But the biggest thrill was that you could light the wrappers on fire, and in my memory, they completely burned up. I had understood that they were made of flash paper, a special effects paper often used in theatre or by magicians.
I got the boys a big box of the cookies for Valentine's Day. They were only mildly impressed with the cookies, but like any pyromaniacs with their matches, they were very excited about the burning of the wrappers.
I didn't remember details about the burning, so our first attempt was not very successful, nor did it burn away as I had remembered. It left big chars of paper that didn't seem at all like a special effect. I wondered if the wrapping had changed, and so we consulted YouTube, where we found a few videos of people successfully launching what are apparently known as Amaretti Rockets. The paper doesn't totally disappear, but it does take flight in a pretty cool way. I didn't remember anything about having to flatten the paper, roll it into a tube, put it on a plate, and light it from the top (not the bottom, as I had wrongfully informed my children to do).
We finally achieved a few successful launches. It was a nice way to warm up a dark month.
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