Baking

Torta al vino is a traditional wine-country cake with white wine in the batter and seedless grapes (or any kind of berry) folded in. The acidity of the wine and the whole juicy fruits—baked grapes are luscious!—give this easy cake a delightful complexity of flavors and textures in each bite.

These are my favorite kind of cakes to make: mix a batter in a bowl; put it in a pan with fruit; set the cake in the oven; remove when done—and that’s it! They’re ready to enjoy, with no fancy finishing or decorating needed. Such cakes are perfect for afternoon tea or as a simple dessert after a big dinner. But you know when I most love these cakes? In the morning—I just cut a small piece from the pan and sit down with a cup of excellent coffee, a copy of the New York Times, and my torta. It’s a great way to start the day. Simple as they are, both of these cakes have interesting, and lovely, touches: the torta invertita is (as you may have guessed) an upside-down cake. You put sugared rhubarb in the bottom of the pan, spread the batter on top, and bake. The fruit cooks and caramelizes and moistens the cake on top; then, when the torta is partly cooled, you invert the pan so the fruit turns into a glossy topping. I love rhubarb, and in this recipe I’ve incorporated a great technique I learned from my editor, Judith, who grows rhubarb in Vermont. The cut-up fruit is tossed with sugar and sits overnight, to soften and release lots of its liquid. The drained pieces go right into the cake pan, and I cook down the juices to make rhubarb syrup (to drizzle on the cake). When rhubarb isn’t available, other fruits make a great torta invertita: ripe stone fruits like apricots, nectarines, peaches, or plums; ripe pears, figs, and pineapple are good, too.

When we arrived in Vermont to visit my editor for several intensive days of work on this book, she had made the focaccia from her children’s bread book for our lunch. Several days later, when we were winding up, I noticed on the windowsill a pint basket of fresh figs we hadn’t used up, and, remembering how much I loved the sweet fruit-studded focaccias I had had as a child, I suggested we improvise with those figs. So here is the recipe we put together, which celebrates a warm childhood memory reborn in the northern hills of Vermont. It fits right in with our dessert theme in this book of fresh fruits embedded in crusts, and is lovely for breakfast, for tea, or with after-dinner coffee.

Peaches are delightful prepared this way, but apricots, cherries, or a mixture of both will yield equally good results. Serve warm in a bowl with vanilla ice cream.

In our house, where nothing goes to waste, you can bet that bread pudding is a highly esteemed dessert. This is a simple, delicious version (with a new twist that I just discovered). It is great in summer with any fresh berries—and frozen berries work fine the rest of the year. I like to use blueberries because they remain whole—especially small wild ones. I also like raspberries and other soft berries, precisely because they melt into the pudding and leave bursts of flavor where they baked. So you can experiment: firm strawberries would be nice, cut up, as would other semifirm fruits, like ripe pears. I would avoid very juicy fruits, though. I like white breads for pudding, but, as with the Peach Lasagna (following recipe), it should be a hearty homemade or country white bread, not sourdough. I don’t like sour breads in general, and certainly not for desserts. But when we were testing recipes in Vermont, we had only day-old bread that was a bit more sour than I liked, and that prompted me to develop a new twist on the recipe. There was a jug of maple syrup on the kitchen counter at my editor Judith’s house, and I decided to balance the sourness by drizzling the bread with syrup and toasting it in the oven to sweeten and caramelize it lightly. As I am sure you will agree when you taste the pudding, it’s worth using the maple syrup whether your bread is sour or not.

Legend has it that this dessert was born in 1600, in the monastery of Monte Sant’ Angelo, where there is a sanctuary dedicated to the Archangel Michael. As the story goes, while the nuns in the monastery were preparing the dough for the ostie—the Communion wafer or host—some of the almonds fell in the hot honey. Not having anything close by to pick them out, they used the hosts they were making, and so the dessert was born. In this simple dessert, two wafers are filled like a sandwich with almonds caramelized in honey. It is a treat for the faithful on the special holiday of St. Michael the Archangel on September 29—even nonbelievers will love them.

Filled with nuts and meringue, this lattice-topped tart is quite lovely, quite easy, and typically Italian. In Andria, Carlo Tottolo gets almonds from the area of Toritto, some of the best in all of Italy.

It is hard to reproduce an authentic version of a typical Pugliese bread without the special starter and the wood-burning oven for baking. But, as you will find with the following recipe, this memorable focaccia is one that you can bake successfully at home. The topping of marinated onions and cherry tomatoes is simple and delicious. With this dough as a base, however, you can be creative and make a focaccia with mushrooms, leeks, sausages, and cheese in any combination. Keep in mind, though, that a simple topping, with a few distinct and harmonious flavors, is always more successful than a topping that tries to incorporate too many things. Be sure to season your topping ingredients and, where appropriate, cook and cool them before assembling the focaccia, so they don’t just dry out in the oven.

Babà al rhum is a favorite dessert in Naples, found in most pasticcerie, filled with whipped cream, or crema pasticciera (custard cream), or cannoli cream—or just oozing with syrup. In this recipe, I give you a limoncello syrup to soak the babas, and you can fill them with ice cream or whipped cream, the ricotta filling for cannoli (page 307), Espresso Zabaglione (page 156), or the cream for Limoncello Tiramisù (page 120). If you don’t have baba molds, you can bake the cakes in small (not mini-) muffin pans. You could also use two small Bundt pans.

This tart is a specialty of Calvizzano, a town near Naples, made with the mastantuono pear, which grows there. You will have to visit Calvizanno to taste the mastantuono—a small round yellow-green pear—but several of our American varieties, such as small Seckel pears or medium-sized Anjou or Bosc, are perfect for this great tart. In this recipe, the fruit is first cooked and saturated in a natural syrup, then baked in a pastry crust. Make sure to use pears that are still firm. This tart is delicious with a dollop of whipped cream, or served warm with some vanilla ice cream. I also like it with sour cream.

Of all the wonderful ricotta torte and crostate I have made, this one is so moreunpretentious and delightful that I urge you to put it in your dessert repertoire. The cake is moist and sweet, with a hint of orange and the crunch of toasted almond slices in each bite. In Rome, this cake is made with sheep’s-milk ricotta, giving it an additional layer of complexity, and if you do have access, by all means use sheep’s-milk ricotta and follow the same procedures. Top with a dollop of whipped cream, or, to make it fresher, fold into the whipped cream an equal amount of sour cream. Top all with berries in season, or some halved ripe figs when available.

Cornmeal cookies are a favorite all over northern Italy: the Veneto has its zaletti, in Friuli we have gialetti. In Piemonte, you will find crumiri, piped into distinctive crescent-moon shapes. They are deliciously crumbly and just sweet enough.

Sabbiosa means “sandy,” and that’s a good description of this delightful cake. At first bite it seems dry, but then it melts in your mouth, and you will love its golden hue as well. The cake can be enjoyed plain, simply dusted with confectioners’ sugar, or doused with amaretto or limoncello and a topping of cream and/or fruit and berries. Serve it warm right from the oven; freeze it to pull out when unexpected guests drop in—or (as I do) have a piece for breakfast with cappuccino. All in all, this is a recipe you need to try.

Fregola means “crumb,” and fregolotta means “one big crumb:” for this delightful treat, you make and bake lots of little crumbs into two round cookie crumbles. This is an ideal cake/cookie: it keeps for days in a tin, and is delightful after dinner with some ice cream or whipped cream. It is the quintessential cookie to have with your espresso to finish a true Italian meal.

Decades after the fateful bite that I took of the peach when I was in Padova at the age of twelve, I still think there is nothing more sensuous than biting into a perfectly ripe peach. When the same peach is baked, though, it takes on an additional element of complexity in flavor. Bake the peaches on an amaretto crust, with a hint of chocolate, and you have a delectable Italian flavor harmony.

Apples grow well in the Carnic mountains, in the northern part of Friuli, and are used in many desserts. This delicious double-crusted tart reflects the deep-rooted frugality of cooks in this tough mountainous terrain. The crust is made with bread crumbs taken from stale bread, probably because of the scarcity of white flour and the time it takes to make a refined pastry dough. But the results, in the Carnic spirit, are delicious.

Strudel seems like a complex dessert, but once you have a feeling for the dough and its elasticity, all else is elementary. I recall my grandma saying that for the strudel to be good you need to be able to read the newspaper through the stretched dough, so rolling and stretching it as thin as you can is the key to a special strudel. Keep one idea in mind: do not be afraid to handle the dough, lift it up on the back of your hands, curl your fingers into a fist, and stretch the dough with your knuckles. It will yield and stretch without tearing. Or grasp one edge and lift the sheet above the work surface and let it hang free—just the force of gravity will make it stretch. Or, if you have someone to help you, pull the dough from opposite sides—it will stretch that way too. Don’t worry if the edges remain a bit thicker: you can cut those off with a pizza cutter before filling the strudel. This is a large strudel; it can be served for a couple of days. Baked strudel freezes well, so leftover pieces can be wrapped securely and frozen for a couple of months. Defrost when needed, and reheat before serving.

Sacher torte is known around the world as a specialty of Vienna (at the Hotel Sacher) but is commonly found in pastry shops and in home kitchens of Trieste. It is sure to delight the chocolate lovers in your household. It will keep well for a few days in a cookie tin without refrigeration, but for longer storing time do refrigerate. You can also bake and freeze the cake layers in advance. Defrost and assemble and glaze the torte before serving.

I wanted to include a dessert where chocolate was the main ingredient because, well, because people love it. This recipe was previously published in Rosa’s New Mexican Table by Roberto Santibañez and is one of my proudest creations. The tomatillo sauce may seem unusual, but trust me, you will be pleasantly surprised, and the smokiness of the chipotles gives an incredible depth to this scrumptious dessert. Boca negra cake got its name because, once you dig in, your mouth will be covered in luxurious chocolate. Be sure to use high-quality chocolate because it will make all the difference in the world. Serve it as is or with a bit of lightly sweetened whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, or Natilla (page 163).