Table of contents:
- 1. Giulio cake
- 2. Caprese cake
- 3. Lemon delight
- 4. Setteveli cake
- 5. Cake of the Four Cities
- 6. Ricotta and pear cake
- 7. First love
- 8. Mimosa cake
- 9. Cassata
- a thousand leaves
Video: For these 10 Italian cakes I would break the diet even now
2024 Author: Cody Thornton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 12:26
You can't get enough of international days, every pretext is good to celebrate something, from burgers to inner peace. And when marketing takes the field, as in the case of International Dog Biscuit Day, we border on the ridiculous.
The exception that confirms the rule is the international cake day, which is celebrated tomorrow November 26. It will also be in the smell of marketing, however, that kind of perennial diet that we follow in so many to keep ourselves on point, allows me to break it. Even if only with the thought.
Here, in fact, to follow you will find 10 cakes. Maybe they are not the best that are prepared in Italian pastry shops, or maybe yes, for sure I would break any diet even now.
Between whole pieces and single portions have I forgotten something essential?
1. Giulio cake
Where is it? Knam pastry shop
Via Augusto Anfossi, 10, Milan Tel. 02 5519 4448
Yep, the famous one Giulio cake, with the brand of the Teutonic pastry chef Ernst Knam, who dedicated it to one of his four children.
The Milanese can order it by pointing their finger at the glittering counter of the patisserie of the same name, in the Porta Romana area.
The cake remains of a superior shape that transcends all ages and historical eras, not recommended by the most vertiginously competent dieticians but for once we forget it. Spectacular cocoa shortcrust pastry shell, filled with silky salted caramel covered with a sensual layer of dark chocolate ganache.
2. Caprese cake
Where is it? Pepe Mastro Confectioner
Via Nazionale, 2/4, Sant’Egidio del Monte Albino (SA). Tel. 081 5154151
Not having tried this chocolate and almond cake, succinct in ingredients and naturally gluten-free, is such a free self-punishing gesture that it deserves an analysis session.
It seems to have been born in Capri in the 1950s, by mistake. The years were roaring, the island never slept, it happened to confuse cocoa with flour.
Whether it is truth or marketing, the caprese is prepared by basing an alchemical proportion between almond flour, dark chocolate, sugar, butter and eggs. Less is more, say those who play the blues.
3. Lemon delight
Where is it? Sal De Riso
Via Roma, 80 - Minori (SA). Tel. 089877941
The lemon delight was born in 1978, from the imaginative imagination of a pastry chef and chef from Sorrento that the world has not thanked enough: Carmine Marzuillo. It is right to point this out in this era of radical mastercheffism.
The recipe consisted of a semispherical and miniaturized sponge cake filled with diplomatic cream with Sorrento lemon, even better if from Massa, covered with a limoncello flavored glaze. In common use, the lemon soon became the Amalfi sfusato, with a peel equally loaded with explosive essential oils but a less acrid juice.
If you say lemon delight, with all due respect to the Sorrentines, you say Salvatore De Riso, star pastry chef who assembles just the right sponge cake, cream enriched with a lemon curd and a champion glaze.
Memorable for various reasons that can be summarized in one: if you don't moan with pleasure you need a heart transplant.
4. Setteveli cake
Where is it? Biasetto pastry shop
Via Jacopo Facciolati, 12, 35126 Padua. Tel. 049 8024428
It is chocolate sweetened by chocolate. Which gives way to chocolate. Which, with contempt for the leftover remnants of liver, yields once again to alternating with chocolate. The pleasure is exponential: who wants to stop multiplying chocolate for chocolate?
Known face, Luigi Biasetto. And not just because it "goes on television". It is that he has carved out his place in the sun among the great pastry chefs, and not only in Italy.
In his elegant Paduan workshop, the results are evident: from the Setteveli cake to the pistachio croissant, everything has an almost mystical aura.
5. Cake of the Four Cities
Where is it? Cracco restaurant (maybe)
Via Victor Hugo, 4 - Milan. Tel. 02 876774
Find it in some pastry shop? Naa, difficult. I was lucky enough to try it at the presentation of the book "Someone Likes Cracco", where the former judge of Masterchef deprived of those bad guys in the Michelin guide of the second star, explained that he had discovered this cake by talking to the super pastry chef Iginio Massari, who it told the story of a cake disputed between the cities of Verona, Vicenza, Mantua and Modena.
The composition is ingenious: shortcrust pastry base filled with almonds and orange peel, with a surface coating made of real egg pasta noodles. The Mantua tagliatelle cake or even the Emilian ricciolina cake come to mind.
The changes made to the original recipe by Cracco are the addition of figs and the chef's virtuosity: a very thin sheet of pasta draped in place of the traditional tagliatelle.
6. Ricotta and pear cake
Where is it? Sal De Riso
Via Roma, 80 - Minori (SA). Tel. 089877941
Sal De Riso, already mentioned for the lemon delight, looks at the other pastry chefs from the top of his new status: two cakes on this list.
Thanks to the correspondence of amorous senses between two products of the Sorrento coast with few rivals, pears and hazelnuts, united in this cake for the first time in 1998.
A casket of Giffoni hazelnut sponge cake with the soft ricotta filling, Agevola pears and the aroma of Sorrento lemons inside.
7. First love
Where is it? Veneto pastry shop
Via Salvo D’Acquisto, 8 - Brescia. Tel. 030 392586
There are two types of famous pastry chef. The one famous for how you eat in its pastry shop, and the one famous for being on TV. Then there is Iginio Massari, who is so much a category apart that he has a fan club, to say, an important step in the construction of his cult.
A few years ago the Marvel superhero who in the Veneto pastry shop in Brescia makes things rise with his eyes and whispers to panettone, presented at the Salon du Chocolat in Milan, causing the excited cries of the fans, a heart-shaped cake with mirror glaze.
The composition is this: sponge cake base soaked in cocoa and orange juice, bitter dark chocolate mousse, light creamy with sour cherries in syrup and a red glaze that attracts more than a magnet.
8. Mimosa cake
Where is it? Only in the books of Maurizio Santin, unfortunately
It is not so much the number of platitudes that I read on the mimosa cake; is the number of platitudes with a tone "now I'll explain it to you", other than the platitudes of others. Okay, mimosa is a bit trashy cake, like a fifty-year-old with blow-dried bangs, if we trust the personal data that accompany it.
The sober version of the Inter pastry chef Maurizio Santin is organized around a supporting structure of sponge cake soaked in moderately alcoholic syrup, and stuffed with custard and whipped cream. This glazed structure is then covered with crumbs or cubes of (other) sponge cake.
There is also a jeweled version, very pop, stuffed with chopped pineapple and its syrup. But it soon becomes clear that he is only looking for the famous Warholian 15 minutes.
9. Cassata
Where is it? Ancient Coffee Spinnato
Via Principe di Belmonte, 107 - Palermo. Tel. 091 7495104
Vocation of a great international café, with a sophisticated indoor tea room and tables in the aristocratic via Principe di Belmonte, tormented by pigeons that swoop down to grab chips and olives, Spinnato will also have lost the allure, and even the mirrored cleanliness of once upon a time, but remains immensely popular with Palermo professionals and tourists.
That's right, if only for the cassata.
If the judgment stops at aesthetics, see for yourself, you really shouldn't cut it. The fact remains that having it on hand and not trying it is a crime. Net of the slightly baroque but still bewitching aspect, the fresh, soft and juicy candied fruit stand out.
a thousand leaves
Where is it? De Bellis pastry shop
Piazza del Paradiso, 56/57 - Rome. Tel. 06 6861480
Andrea De Bellis did not open his small pastry shop in the promising Piazza del Paradiso by chance. It was a way to tell you that his Millefoglie remains among the few unshakable certainties of our changing lives.
The Roman pastry chef is so convinced that he Italianized that pastry masterpiece that is the French Millefeuille cake, otherwise known by the Americans, sweet Napoleon, that you opt for the "Millefoglie Bar", which means being able to choose the ingredients to compose the own layer cake.
Crispy pastry with cream, classic, chocolate, hazelnut, or with different toppings: dried, candied or fresh fruit, drops of chocolate or coffee. The road to heaven (to piazza del Paradiso) is paved with single portions of millefeuille made in De Bellis.
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