Christmas is just a few days away, and I am at my desk with a cup of coffee about to write a recipe for one of my childhood apple bread cakes.
This bread cake is rich in taste and ingredients like apples, walnuts, almonds, and spices.
It will be the last post of the year, after two years of blogging.
Two years of blogging.
Before 2019, the blog did not respond to a definite editorial project.
It was the tool of a company involved in food consultancy.
I found the company with two other people living abroad, and we had our head office in London.
When we decided to separate our ways, we closed the company. But I was the only owner of the blog domain and wondered what to do with it.
I always thought I wanted to use this space to tell stories and tastes but never decided to take this step. Would anyone read one of my posts or cook one of my recipes?
Then I thought that the recipes from my origins, and those that fantastic people have shared with me over time, deserved to be shared.
I have no children, and publishing that gastronomic heritage of recipes and folklore is a way of honoring the memory of those who came before me.
Today the blog is what I had in mind, a tale of stories from the pantry and recipes from my family cookbook. Not forgetting the historical origins of ingredients and dishes.
The beginning.
In the first post of the ‘new course’, when the blog goes from choral to personal, I wrote about apples, roots and new beginnings. On 10 January 2019, in the post about apple jam, I wrote:
“Now I’m alone. And I decided to take it as an opportunity to find my way to be a food blogger. I need to cook my roots”.
A cycle began and ended with apples.
My aerial roots could find a good place “to be preserved” in one of those jars of jam that I prepare today as my nonna used to do then. It was not by chance that I entrusted my debut to a jam recipe, choosing apples as the main ingredient. Apples have always been my grandmother’s favorite fruit, and she was the person from whom I learned my most important lesson: to be curious. In life as in the kitchen.
Two years later, I look at the work I have done. And I see a blog about family food, Italian and Bolognese recipes, memories.
Was this the food and the stories I wanted to tell? Yes, they were.
And I had as much fun remembering as cooking.
Bread cake and home recipes.
In this end-of-year post, which ideally closes a cycle, apples are back.
This is a simple dessert to make in each season.
It is a cake where you recycle stale bread to create a different flavor.
And this is one of the wonders of cooking. That is the possibility of reusing leftovers to create a new recipe. A way of not scrambling and, perhaps, not brooding.
A couple of apples, a handful of almonds and walnuts, and some raisins make this cake, which resembles a pudding, a special dessert.
As Sara said, simple sweets like ciambelle and bread cakes are like Cinderella.
If you “dress them”, they turn into princesses. It will be enough to add aside a slice of cake a spoon table of whipping cream or mascarpone cream.
Great for breakfast, merenda, or with a cup of tea. “Dressed” with whipping cream, it can also be served as a dessert.
Buon Natale, Monica
Cook with me.
HERE you will find all my doughnut and breakfast cake recipes.
Keep in Touch
If you like, you can follow me on Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook.
Apple Bread Cake Recipe
serves 4-6
20cm diameter mold
List of the Ingredients
stale bread, about 140 g
milk, about 1/2 l
brown sugar, 100 g
raisins (soaked in water and liqueur), 70g
walnuts, 50g
almonds, 50g
eggs, 3
1 apple + juice of 1/2 lemon
unsweetened cocoa powder, 2 g
baking powder, 2 g
grated rind of half organic lemon
cinnamon and nutmeg, 1 g
clove and ginger powder, 1 g
pinch of salt
butter for the baking tray
Method
Put the stale bread in a bowl and pour in the milk. Leave to soak until the bread is soft and has drunk all the milk. If necessary, turn the bread from top to bottom so that it is well soaked on all sides.
In a different bowl, mix all the dry ingredients – keep the walnuts, almonds, and raisins to one side – then add the eggs and bread and stir to combine the ingredients (you can also use a whisk).
Finally, add the raisins and coarsely chopped walnuts and almonds and mix again.
Finally, add the raisins and the coarsely chopped walnuts and almonds and mix again.
Peel the apple, remove the core, cut it into pieces, moisten with lemon juice and add to the mixture.
Grease the mold generously and pour in the mixture.
Bake in preheated oven to 180C degrees for about 35-40 minutes.
Test with a wooden toothpick, and when it comes out dry, it is ready.
Leave to cool in the mold.
