Italian Cake Recipes

Traditional Italian Cake Recipes For Making Delicious Dessert Cakes

Pasta Margarita, or Margarita Cake

Potato meal, three ounces; sugar, six ounces; four eggs, lemon juice.

Beat well the egg yolks with the sugar, add the potato meal and the lemon juice and stir everything for half an hour. Finally, beat well the whites, and mix the rest, stirring continually but slowly. Pour the mixture in a smooth and round mold, greased with butter and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Put at once in the oven. Remove from the mold when cold and dust with powdered sugar and vanilla.

Bocca di Dama, or Almond Cake

Granulated sugar, nine ounces; very fine Hungarian flour [or substitute any fine cake flour], five ounces; sweet almonds with some bitter ones, two ounces; six whole eggs and three egg yolks; taste of lemon peel.

After skinning the almonds in warm water and drying them well, grind or better pound them well together with a tablespoonful of sugar and mix well with the flour. Put the rest of the sugar in a deep dish with the egg yolks and the grated lemon peel (just a taste) and stir with a ladle for a quarter of an hour. In another dish beat the six whites of egg and when they have become quite thick mix them with other ingredients stirring slowly everything together.

To bake, place the mixture in a baking tin greased evenly with butter and sprinkled with powdered sugar and flour.

Pasta di Farina Gialla, or Corn Meal Cakes

Corn meal, seven and a half ounces; wheat flour, five and a half ounces; granulated sugar, five and a half ounces; butter, three and a half ounces; lard, two ounces; a pinch of aniseed, one egg.

For this Italian cake recipe, mix together the corn meal, the flour, and the aniseed and knead with the butter, the lard and the egg that quantity that you can, forming a loaf that you will put aside. What remains is to be kneaded with water forming another loaf. Then mix the two loaves and knead a little, not much, because the dough must remain soft.

Flatten with the rolling pin until it becomes one quarter of an inch thick, sprinkle with flour, and cut in different sizes and shapes with thin stamps [or cutters].

Grease a baking tin with lard, sprinkle with flour, glaze with the egg, bake and dust with powdered sugar.

Cotognata, or Quince Cake

The ingredients for this Italian cake recipe are about six pounds of quinces and four pounds of granulated sugar.

Put on the fire the apples covered with water, and when they begin to crack remove them, skin and scrape to put together all the pulp. Rub the latter through a sieve. Put back the pulp on the fire with the sugar and stir continually in order that it may not attach to the bottom of the kettle. It will be enough to boil for seven or eight minutes and remove when it begins to form pieces when lifted with the ladle.

Now, in order to prepare the quince cake spread it on a board to the thickness of about a silver dollar and dry it in the sun covered with cheese cloth to keep away the flies. When it is dry, cut it in the form of chocolate tablets and remove each piece from the board passing the blade of a knife underneath.

If it is wished to make it crisp, melt about three and a half pounds of granulated sugar with two tablespoonfuls of water, and when the sugar has boiled enough to "make the thread" smear every one of the little quince cakes with it. If the sugar becomes too hard during the operation put it back on the fire with a little water and make it boil again. When the sugar is dry on one side and on the edge, smear the other side.

Focaccia alla Portoghese, or Portuguese Cake

Sweet almonds, five ounces; granulated sugar, five ounces; potato meal, one and a half ounces; three eggs; one big orange or two small.

First mix the yolks of the eggs with the sugar, then add the flour, then the almonds skinned and chopped fine, then the orange juice (through a colander), then a taste of orange peel. Finally add to the mixture the whites of the eggs well beaten.

Put in a paper mold greased evenly with butter, with a thickness of about an inch and bake in a very moderately hot oven.

After baked, cover with a white glaze or frost, made with powdered sugar, lemon juice, and the white of eggs.

Pasticcini di Semolino, or Farina Cakes

Farina, six and a half ounces; sugar, three and a half ounces; pine seeds, two ounces; butter, a small piece; milk, one quart; four eggs, a pinch of salt, taste of lemon peel.

For this old Italian cake recipe, cook the farina in the milk and when it begins to thicken pour the pine seeds, previously chopped fine and pounded with the sugar, then the butter, and the rest, less the eggs which must be put in last when the mixture has completely cooled. Then place the whole well mixed in little molds, greased evenly with butter and sprinkled with bread crumbs ground fine, and bake.

Croccante a Bagno Maria, or Crisp Cake in Double Boiler

Sugar, five and a half ounces; sweet almonds, three ounces; egg yolks, five; milk, one pint.

Skin the almonds and chop them in little pieces about as big as a grain of wheat. Put on the fire two-thirds of the sugar and when it is all melted pour the almonds and stir continually with the ladle until they have taken the color of cinnamon. Then put them in a tin greased with butter and when they are cold, pound them very fine with the remaining third of sugar.

Add the yolks and then the milk, mix well, and pour the mixture in a mold with a hole in the middle and greased evenly with butter. Place the mold in a double boiler so that it will be cooked by steam.

Amaretti leggieri, or Almond Cakes

Ingredients: Almonds (sweet and bitter), eggs, castor sugar.

For this Italian cake recipe, blanch equal quantities of sweet and bitter almonds, and dry them a little in the oven, then pound them in a mortar, and add nearly double their quantity of castor sugar. Mix with the white of an egg well beaten up into a snow, and shape into little balls about the size of a pigeon's egg. Put them on a piece of stout white paper, and bake them in a very slow oven. They should be very light and delicate in flavor.

Cakes alla Livornese

Ingredients: Almonds, eggs, sugar, salt, potato flour, butter.

Pound two ounces of almonds, and mix them with the yolks of two eggs and a spoonful of castor sugar flavored with orange juice. Then mix two ounces of sugar with an egg, and to this add the almonds, a pinch of salt, and gradually strew in one and a half ounces of potato flour. When it is all well mixed, add one ounce of melted butter, shape the little cakes and bake them in a slow oven.