{"id":36245,"date":"2023-05-04T16:33:15","date_gmt":"2023-05-04T14:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tortelliniandco.com\/?p=36245"},"modified":"2026-08-22T18:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T16:04:11","slug":"tenerina-cake-gluten-free-recipe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tortelliniandco.com\/en\/tenerina-cake-gluten-free-recipe\/","title":{"rendered":"Tenerina cake. A typical chocolate dessert from Emilia-Romagna"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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?<\/span><\/p>\n

Chocolate and home rules<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

There were rules at home. Candy and chocolate rarely, soft drinks not even to speak of.<\/span><\/p>\n

Exceptions were valuable allies in escaping such stringent prescriptions.<\/span><\/p>\n

At Easter, I used to receive many chocolate eggs.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

School parties and classmates’ birthdays were also occasions to indulge in forbidden foods.<\/span><\/p>\n

With my glass of bitter orange soda, of which I savored every drop, I would go through the trays. I loved the small bign\u00e8, 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).<\/span><\/p>\n

I have always been interested in cakes.<\/span><\/p>\n

I appreciated the ice cream ones (take a look <\/span>at the one I make without the ice cream maker<\/span><\/a><\/strong>), another food subjected to strict rationing, and the multi-layered ones, especially when filled with chantilly or buttercream.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

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\"Chestnut<\/p>\n

Nonna’s Torta tenerina<\/em> recipe<\/strong><\/h4>\n

I admit that Nonna’s recipe for tenerina is perfect. Everyone who tastes it says it is remarkable.<\/span><\/p>\n

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 ma\u00eetre.<\/span><\/p>\n

“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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tenerina cake has to taste like a chocolate praline and melt in the mouth, she used to say.<\/span><\/p>\n

And with a snap, she would close the oven door and the conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tenerina cake, a typical recipe from Ferrara<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n

Along the Via Emilia, food is the subject of heated debates.<\/span><\/p>\n

Take the Tenerina Cake. Several cities in Emilia-Romagna, besides Ferrara, even Bologna and Forl\u00ec, claim its creation in honor of Queen Elena Petrovich of Montenegro, who married the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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 <\/span>King’s Biscuits<\/span><\/a><\/strong>, to King Victor Emmanuel III, and we also know her name and surname.<\/span><\/p>\n

What am I trying to say?<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

But I don’t want to ruin the story’s poetry.<\/span>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?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Keep in Touch<\/b><\/h5>\n