Tag Archives: italian cake

Italian apple cake – on my long forgotten cake stand

Posted on May 5, 2013 | 5 Comments

I found some treasures when I moved into a house in the late 1990s, in the back of some tall cupboards, completely out of sight. One of them was a heavy, lead crystal cake stand. I didn’t make cakes back then so used the cake stand as a holder for gorgeous coloured stones and crystals (I was a bit of a hippie back then!). When I moved house, it got packed away and stayed there until last weekend. I was having guests over and wanted to make something that was simple but looked fantastic on my crystal cake stand. Of course I thought of Tessa Kiros, and the beautifully photographed desserts in her cookbooks.

italian apple cake on cake server

I have three of Tessa’s cookbooks but my favorite is the most recent one, “Limoncello and linen water”. I love its soft pink velvet bookmark, inspirational photos of food and fragments of stories usually about an Italian friend living in Italy (often in Venezia) and a dish they make. I made baci di dama biscotti some time back and could not wait to try other recipes in the book. It has taken me quite a while to get back to it, but last weekend I finally made her amazing apple cake. The photography in Tessa’s books inspires me to make a special effort with food presentation so placing the apple cake on the long forgotten crystal cake stand seemed like the perfect match.

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I did find Tessa’s recipe (called Leontine’s apple cake in her book) to be too sweet. So I reduced the amount of sugar and added lemon zest and a bit of cinnamon powder to the crust. I used green Granny Smith apples rather than Golden Delicious as suggested in the book. The result was slightly more tart than the version in the cookbook, but that suits my tastes perfectly. We enjoyed the cake with some cinnamon whipped cream and a glass of Tasmanian Botrytis Riesling. A perfect end to a wonderful dinner party with friends.

zoom in italian apple cake_corrected

Italian apple cake
125g butter, softened
220g raw sugar
1 egg
250g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 lemon, zest only
750g Granny Smith apples (about 750g), peeled, cored and cut into 1cm cubes
Icing sugar for dusting the cake
Greek yoghurt or cinnamon whipped cream to serve

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Butter and dust a 24cm diameter spring form cake tin. Set aside. Beat the butter and raw sugar with electric beaters until light and creamy. Drop in the egg and continue to beat until thick. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, vanilla, cinnamon and lemon zest. Add the dry mixture to the butter mixture half at a time. You may find that the mixture gets to hard to mix with the electric mixer so continue by hand until well combined.

Place 2/3 of the mixture into the prepared cake tin, making sure the base is evenly covered and it comes 2/3 up the side of the cake tin. Flattened it out with your fingers so it is even thickness on the base and the sides. Set aside. Now prepare the apples and place them evenly on the base of the cake. Crumble the remaining 1/3 of the pastry over the apples evenly.

apple cake without crumb top

apple cake with crumb before baking

Bake for 60 minutes or so until the pastry is golden and firm. Cool on a wire cake rack then remove from the tin and dust with icing sugar. Serve with some Greek yoghurt or cinnamon whipped cream (cream, a teaspoon of icing sugar and a good sprinkling of cinnamon all whipped up).

apple cake with 2 pink glasses on cake stand

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Panforte – sticky, sweet, peppery and perfect

Posted on October 7, 2012 | 6 Comments

Panforte literally means “strong bread”. But it is nothing like bread. More like an English Christmas cake – but with less cake, more spices and sticky sweet honey. It originated in central Italy, where “panforte di Siena” is typically found. Tradition has it that in Siena, panforte has 17 ingredients, representing the 17 contrade (or districts within the city). The ingredients however are a closely guarded secret, each baker having their own secret combination of spices. Siena, in case you have never been, is a beautiful medieval city in Tuscany ~ well worth a visit.



What is great about panforte is that it keeps for weeks, if not months. It is said that during the Crusades, panforte was taken to war because it would keep so long. When I make a batch, I keep it in the fridge in foil and keep it there for when guests arrive. That said, I love eating it for breakfast with a cup of strong coffee, so it actually does not last that long in my house ~ maybe a week at most.

There are a lot of panforte recipes using different dried fruits, spices and even with chocolate. I have been experimenting with a few and ended up making my own variation. I found some fantastic candied (glace’) whole figs at the Enoteca Sileno last week, as well as some candied orange and clementine paste. If you can’t find the same ingredients, you could use an orange paste from a delicatessen or other citrus peel. However I would highly recommend using the candied figs, which I have seen in delicatessens, and not substituting them with all dried figs. The candied figs given the panforte a lovely texture and more candied taste.

Panforte is also spicy. My recipe has ginger, black pepper, cardamom and cinnamon amongst other spices and a good dose of cocoa powder. The pepper gives it a sweet hot and chocolatey aftertaste, which I love. Traditional medieval panforte was covered in black pepper but since the 1800s, it is generally covered in more delicate icing sugar. A thick layer of snowy icing sugar is a lovely contrast to the dark panforte.

Panforte
1 cup almonds, blanched then roasted
1/2 cup hazelnuts, roasted and skin removed
1/2 cup candied figs, roughly chopped
1/4 cup glacé ginger, chopped
3 tablespoons candied orange peel, finely chopped (or orange paste, or chopped glacé oranges)
1/4 cup prunes, pitted and chopped
1/4 cup dried figs, chopped into small pieces
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
150g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, powdered
1/2 teaspoon cardamom, powdered
1 teaspoon ginger, powdered
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon (heaped if you like pepper) black pepper, ground
150g honey
150g sugar
Rice paper to line your baking tin
Butter for greasing the baking tin
Candy thermometer
22 cm cake tin with a removable base

Preheat the oven to 150 degrees. Butter the tin and place rice paper on the base (cut to fit the circle) and baking paper on the sides. Roughly chop the nuts then place in a large bowl with the orange peel, candied figs, dried figs, prunes, cocoa powder, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, pepper, cardamom and flour. Mix until well combined.

Prepare a spatula and spoon by covering them in oil before doing the next step. Heat the honey and sugar on medium heat in a small saucepan, stirring until the temperature reaches 115 degrees on the candy thermometer. Working quickly, pour the molten sugars into the bowl with the rest of the ingredients and mix with the spoon. The mixture will be quite dry to start with but after a few minutes as the molten sugars disperse, it become very thick and wet with the sugars. Spoon into the prepared cake tin and pat down with the oiled spatula so that the surface is flat.

Bake for 30 minutes at 150 degrees. The center might still be a bit soft when you take it out, but it will harden as it cools. Place on a wire rack and allow to cool about 10 minutes. Remove the sides of the tin and dust thickly with icing sugar. Allow to cool completely before serving. Cut into thin wedges to serve with coffee or a good port or muscat.

You might like to imagine that you are looking out over the hills in Tuscany as you bite into the peppery, sweet panforte.

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Apricot and lemon Bundt cake

Posted on September 17, 2012 | 6 Comments

My mother has always had a Bundt tin – you know the ones, they have a hole in the middle. When I was little, she would often make a cake she called giorno e notte (night and day) – one half with cocoa and the other half without (half dark and half light) in the Bundt tin. The colours were swirled throughout. Back then I was fascinated by the fact that there was a hole in the middle of the cake and when you inverted it, a lovely pattern would be on the top. Mamma would dust the top of the cake with snowy white icing sugar and when you had a slice, you were never sure how much of the chocolate part you would get.

When I was at my mother’s on the weekend, we were looking at old recipe books (as we often do), and I found a lovely recipe for apricot and lemon cake that is made in a Bundt tin. I told my mother that I had never made a cake in one as I don’t have a tin. She was astounded. “I have a few of them”, mamma told me. “The Dr Oetker tin is the nicest and makes the traditional shape”. When she got it out of the cupboard, I oohed and aahed as I was taken back to my childhood when she would make the day and night cake with the hole in the middle. “Would you like to borrow it?” she asked.

So I borrowed the tin, copied the recipe and then made the cake. I didn’t make my mother’s “day and night” cake as I had a lot of glace apricots left over from the previous week and was wondering how to use them. This cake fitted the bill perfectly. It is unbelievably moist, due to the combination of glace apricots and a bit of ginger plus a small tub of sour cream. Of course it is not really italian, but at a stretch, the Bundt tin belongs to a gorgeous italian lady (my mother) and the recipe is in a book that is hers. Make this for afternoon tea to share with your family and friends – mine loved it when I served it up on the weekend. Finally I had made a cake in a Bundt tin – now I don’t really want to return the one I borrowed from my mother….

Apricot lemon cake in a bundt tin
185g butter, at room temperature
1 tablespoon lemon rind
250g caster sugar
4 eggs
50g glace ginger, finely chopped
150g glace apricots, finely chopped
200ml sour cream
250g self-raising flour

Pre-heat the oven to 155 degrees. Grease the inside of a 20 cm Bundt tin with butter then flour it. Make sure it is well covered as you don’t want your cake to stick as the appearance will be ruined.

Beat the butter, lemon rind and sugar with an electric mixer until creamy. Add in the eggs one at a time and beat well after eachaddition. Fold in the fruit and then the sour cream. Last of all, fold in the flour.

Pour into the prepared tin and bake for one hour. Place on a wire cooling rack. Invert the tin after about 10 minutes. When the cake is cold, dust with icing sugar. This will keep for 3 or 4 days or you can cut it up into slices and freeze for up to a month.

Where would we be without our mothers and the wonderful things they have taught us and share with us?

With mamma, September 2012

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Fritole with zabaglione – memories of Venice

Posted on September 7, 2012 | 2 Comments

My dear friend Ben reminds me often of the first time he tried fritole. We were 20 years old and traveling in Europe together during a break from university. We were in Venice, looking in the window of a cake shop.

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There were all kinds of delightful pastries, cakes and biscotti; there were also fritole (also known as frittole or frittelle). For me they were just these Italian tasting tiny fried balls with sultanas that mamma made at home and had made since I could remember. The ones we saw in the window that day were a bit different – they were filled with zabaglione. They were like small donuts filled with Marsala laden custard, with sugar scattered on top. I had never tried this combination of flavors so while the tastes were not new to me, the combination was. I recently asked Ben to describe his memories of the first time he tasted fritole with zabaglione and this is what he said: “crispy, soft, sweet….completely divine”.

Ben and I sometimes cook together and this weekend we decided to finally try our hand at recreating the fritole we had tasted in Venice all those years ago. We decided not to use my mother’s delicious fritole recipe (which my niece Claire put up on her blog some time back) as these ones are not meant to be filled with a cream. So I searched for a recipe that might allow the fritole to puff up a bit more and make space for the zabaglione to be piped in. I found a recipe written in Italian, and with that translated, we were set.

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Ben made the fritole mixture and I made the zabaglione. I fried the fritole and he piped the zabaglione. We gave each other suggestions as we worked on our separate components. The deep fryer that Ben had was a bonus. It was ideal for controlling the temperature for frying though you can get by without one (my mother had a bit of a laugh when I told her – “who needs special equipment like that”, she said, ” the fritole turn over on their own once they are cooked”).

Once cooked, let them cool slightly, pipe in the thick sweet zabaglione and then dust them with icing sugar. As an alternative, you can make smaller fritole, roll them in caster sugar when they are still hot and then dip them into the zabaglione just prior to eating as I did in the photo below when I made them again at home. Whichever way you decide to construct the flavors, the result is the same – a completely divine taste sensation.

Fritole with zabaglione
makes about 40 medium sized fritole
Fritole:
280 g plain flour
20g fresh yeast (or 7g dried yeast)
4 egg yolks
20g butter
250 ml whole milk
rind of one lemon, grated
25g pine nuts
40g sultanas
3 tablespoons grappa
Vegetable oil for cooking
Icing sugar for dusting
Zabaglione:
4 very fresh egg yolks
4 half egg shells caster sugar
4 half egg shells Marsala

Prepare the yeast by dissolving it in a bit of warm milk, a tablespoon of sugar and one of flour (exact quantities are not important here). Set to one side.

In a large mixing bowl, place the rest of the flour, butter, egg yolks, sugar, grated lemon rind and a pinch of salt. Mix with a large wooden spoon until the ingredients are well incorporated. The mixture should be quite runny. Add a bit more milk if it is not. Add the yeast mixture and mix well. Cover the bowl with a clean tea towel and allow to rest for about 30 minutes. It should almost double in size.

Add the raisins (which you have soaked in grappa/rum for the last half hour) and pine nuts. Mix well. You are now ready to fry the fritole. Heat the oil to 160 degrees. Drop spoonfuls of mixture into the hot oil (dip the spoon in hot oil before use as it helps prevent the mixture sticking). Turn them over once one side is cooked (though they sometimes flip over as my mother said they would). Once browned, drain them on absorbent paper.

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Whilst the fritole dough is resting, make the zabaglione. Beat the egg yolks and sugar until pale and creamy – at least 5 minutes using an electric beater. Place the mixture carefully in a double boiler. As it is warming up, slowly pour the Marsala in a thin stream, whisking gently the whole time. Keep stirring the zabaglione over the double boiler gently until it thickens (it took me about 15 minutes). Do not allow the mixture to boil.

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Pipe the zabaglione into the fritole using a piping bag and a small nozzle. Dust them with icing sugar. These are best eaten the same day.

Here are a few memories of Venice, in case you need more inspiration.

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