Their name derives from ' confectum', past participle of “conficere” (latin word), that is prepared, manifactured. In the Middle Ages the word  referred to the confetture or dried fruit covered by honey. Actually, the origin of the word confetto like we know today, it is still argument of searches. Here a definition, taken from an encyclopedia, that it explains better the origin and the type of the confetto:

"Small cooked sugar cake, externally covered, that contains an almond, a nocciola or a pistachio nut. The confetti they can be of two various kinds: soft or hard. Those hard, for tradition, contain one toasted peeling almond ; those soft ones have a filling made up of almonds dough, candied fruit or spicy chocolate. There are also small confettini, with seeds of anise or fennel, that are used for decorating cakes or small confectionary of regional tradition cooking. In Italy the confetti are offered in particular events such as baptisms, holy Communion and wedding party.' They represent an important best wishes for important events. In old times the Roman used to fling walnuts, pine seeds or nuts recovered by honey for occasions like births or weddings. The first written trace of them you must go back to the end of the ' 400. In the papal State they were used like homage for theatre actors (as an example the actress E. Duse considered them a mascot). In the 1806 Napoleone went to Verdun under three arches of triumph constructed with white sugared almond. Therefore they are cakes that sink the roots in the history and are very traditional of our country. Actually, Italy is the first producers, but the greater consumers are the Portugal and Spain.

the Cannellini  are very famous for their goodness. This particular kind of confetti are long and thin with a cinnamon heart. Their notoriety is tied to Giacomo Leopardi that ate them a lot and his passion for these cakes was proverbial.

The tradition wants that the wedding confetto is white, just to indicate the purity of the spouse. The ritual of the launch of the confetti outside the church came called “sciarra”, an old term, that is fight, uproar, because the confusion was born for the boys that ran to collect cakes on the ground. The number of confetti must be uneven, an important wish for the birth of the future son.

In the Christening party, instead, the confetti will be rose for the girls, color associated to the blood and therefore to the fertility, blue for the boys, to symbolize the sky and therefore the future honest man. To the silver or gold wedding the confetti will be gold or silver coloured, in the bachelor parties the favor will be  a small goliardic hat with the color of the university faculties (Usually the red one).

How are prepared the confetti?

The almonds, opportunely worked, come put in rotary containers call "bassine". They are distinguished by shape (pear or drum) or for the type of spin (on oblique axis, horizontals with pierced bottom, etc). To their inside they come nebulizzate of the solutions of saccarosio that, thanks to the heating obtained for warm air insufflation, evaporate leaving one uniform sugar layer on the almond. The process is repeated for wetting and drying, until obtaining the intentional layer of cover. After the phase of covering, the confetti have an irregular wrinkled surface and for which they endure the smoothing, the coloration (if necessary) and the polishing. The “confettatura” is a process much laborious and  it can demand also two or three days for being completed.