I arrange the ingredients on the table: fresh eggs from the countryside, dark chocolate, powdered sugar, flour, butter, and salt. That’s all you need for Tenerina Cake.
Some dishes take you back in time. And like Proust’s Madeleine, they are tickets to a nostalgic tour aboard the Orient Express. The bar of dark chocolate I hold in my hands looks like a travel card ready to be obliterated.
This flavor reminds me above all of my university years when I used to invite friends and classmates over. It was a dessert that was always a great success. Who doesn’t like chocolate?
Chocolate and home rules
Throughout my life, I have met more lovers of chocolate than critics, I mean. And while I don’t despise it, you may be surprised to know I hardly ever eat it.
There were rules at home. Candy and chocolate rarely, soft drinks not even to speak of.
Exceptions were valuable allies in escaping such stringent prescriptions.
At Easter, I used to receive many chocolate eggs.
But the chocolate feast lasted only a few days. Then mom would say, “Little girls can’t eat all that chocolate.” And the chocolate would disappear.
School parties and classmates’ birthdays were also occasions to indulge in forbidden foods.
With my glass of bitter orange soda, of which I savored every drop, I would go through the trays. I loved the small bignè, the one-bite ones, with the cream exploding in your mouth. And then the pizzas and the panettone gastronomico (a kind of layered cake made of sandwiches).
I have always been interested in cakes.
I appreciated the ice cream ones (take a look at the one I make without the ice cream maker), another food subjected to strict rationing, and the multi-layered ones, especially when filled with chantilly or buttercream.
Nonna’s Torta tenerina recipe
I admit that Nonna’s recipe for tenerina is perfect. Everyone who tastes it says it is remarkable.
Grandma Sara was an appreciator of ricotta and chestnut flour. There were two ingredients she used often. And the latter was, in her opinion, her coup de maître.
“If you want to give chocolate a boost, add a spoonful of chestnut flour,” she used to say. Well, she also used some potato starch but never wheat flour, which, for Grandma, disturbed the final result.
Tenerina cake has to taste like a chocolate praline and melt in the mouth, she used to say.
And with a snap, she would close the oven door and the conversation.
Tenerina cake, a typical recipe from Ferrara
Along the Via Emilia, food is the subject of heated debates.
Take the Tenerina Cake. Several cities in Emilia-Romagna, besides Ferrara, even Bologna and Forlì, claim its creation in honor of Queen Elena Petrovich of Montenegro, who married the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III.
According to this theory, the cake was born in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to celebrate the haughty-looking queen’s tender heart.
Before writing this post, I conducted extensive research but found no evidence to support this story. Another, less romantic and more practical, anecdote claims the dessert originated in the second half of the twentieth century as a homemade recipe for using up chocolate from Easter eggs.
In support of this second theory, I would add that at the end of the nineteenth century/beginning of the twentieth century, patissier Eugenio Gollini from Vignola, a village near Modena, invented the Torta Barozzi and registered the trademark, thereby keeping the recipe secret. Again, in a small town in the Bolognese area, a lady offered some cookies, now known as King’s Biscuits, to King Victor Emmanuel III, and we also know her name and surname.
What am I trying to say?
If the cake had been invented for the Queen of Italy, we would at least know the pastry chef’s identity, don’t you agree? The fact that the creator is unknown suggests a talented and ingenious home cook rather than a professional pastry chef.
But I don’t want to ruin the story’s poetry.And what does it matter if it is just one of many possible stories that grew in the shadow of the great tree of History?
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Tenerina cake
Equipment
- 25 cm diameter round cake pan
- Electric whisks
- 1 spatula
- 2 large bowls
Ingredients
- 180 g of butter
- 200 g of dark chocolate
- 5 eggs 1 egg = 60 g
- 150 g of powdered sugar
- 20 g of potato starch
- 20 g of chestnut flour or another 20 g of starch
- 1 pinch of salt
Instructions
- Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat. Add the chopped chocolate and stir until melted. Turn off the heat and let it cool for at least 20 minutes, stirring to speed up cooling.
- When the chocolate is lukewarm, preheat the oven to 180C (350F) on the conventional setting.
- Separate the egg yolks from the whites, then beat the whites until stiff peaks form with an electric mixer. Set aside.
- In another bowl, beat the egg yolks with the sugar using a whisk.
- Add the flour and salt all at once to the yolks, then whisk to combine.
- Add half of the egg whites to the cream, then gently fold them in with a spatula.
- Add the melted chocolate to the mixture in three stages. Each time you pour in the melted chocolate, gently stir with the spatula to incorporate.
- Finally, add the remaining beaten egg whites and mix with the spatula.
- Grease the cake tin or line it with parchment paper, then pour in the mixture and bake for 25 minutes. Then turn off the oven, open the door almost all the way, and let the cake rest for 5 minutes before removing it to cool completely.
- Dust the cake with powdered sugar and serve with whipped cream or Chantilly cream. The cake should have a crust on the surface that breaks when you touch it. That's fine.
Tips
- If you can, make it the day before! It will be better.
- Store leftover slices in the refrigerator for a few days.
Traditional sweets from Emilia-Romagna
- In addition to Tenerina Cake, a chocolate (and coffee) cake, there is Torta Barozzi, a gluten-free cake created in the late 1800s by Eugenio Gollini, an avant-garde pastry chef from Vignola (Modena).
- On the blog, you will also find a recipe for a dessert that has been a favorite of the Bolognese since the 1400s. It is Bologna’s famous Torta di Riso whose flavor reminds me, even if the ingredients are different (for example, there is no rice), of Vera Torta, a specialty of the city of Imola alone (a small town in Romagna culture located in the province of Bologna).
- Another popular dessert is Portuguese Milk (or Fiordilatte using the Bolognese name). Whatever the name, it is an ancient and highly satisfying spoon dessert.
- Finally, as famous as it is good, I recommend you look at the recipe for Tagliatelle Cake, Ferrara-born like Tenerina.
2 Comments
Elisabeth K Marshall
The instructions say under step number 6,
Add the melted chocolate to the mixture in three stages. Each time you pour in the cream, gently stir with the spatula to incorporate. But there is no mention of cream in the ingredient list! Please explain. Thank you!
Monica
Hi Elisabeth, I’m sorry! Using cream I meant the melted chocolate. I updated it, grazie. Thank you so much! X, Monica