Brazadela (Ciambella)
This delicious old-world cake, or ciambella, I once learned to make from Mufalda (Muffie) Maiolini, who was from the Piedmont region in Northern Italy. Muffie could not tell me the amounts of the ingr...
Cooking with Carafoli: My Favorite Italian Desserts for Holidays or Any Occasion
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Brazadela (Ciambella)
Torta Sbrisolona
Tenerena al Chocolate
Torta Pasticciotto Leccese
Bergamot Olive Oil Cake
In this feature, I give a sampling of Italian dessert recipes from north to south.
We start with the Brazadela from the Piedmont region. Try a sizeable crumbly cookie called Sbrisolona from the town of Mantua in the Lombardy region. From the area of Ferrara comes a delicious double chocolate cake. From Puglia we have the Torta Pasticciotto Leccese, a cream custard in sweet pastry dough, and from Calabria, “the boot” of Italy, my favorite Bergamot olive oil cake. These recipes carry lots of history from my favorite part of the world.
John F. Carafoli is an international food stylist, consultant, and author. He wrote the seminal book Food Photography and Styling, Cape Cod Chef’s Table, Recipes from Buzzards Bay to Provincetown, and Great Italian American Food in New England: History, Traditions & Memories. He has been published in Gastronomica, The Journal of Food and Culture, The New York Times, L’italo-Americano Italian Newspaper, and edible CAPE COD, where he won an EDDY for best use of recipes in a feature. He was profiled in the Italian publication ER (Emilia Romagna) and presented papers at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery in England. carafoli.com
Recipes
Torta Sbrisolona
(Meaning: crumble)
This classic recipe is a typical dessert of Mantua in the Lombardy region. It dates back as far as the sixteenth century. Chef Alberto Ravazzini gave me this recipe and prepared ...
Tenerena al Chocolate
This recipe comes from Marco Pappalardo, owner of Il Regno Seffa, a fabulous shop in Bologna where I’ve bought fresh pasta and dolce treats. It is a dessert typical of the city of Ferrara. The intense...
Torta Pasticciotto Leccese
I study Italian weekly on Skype with Maria Elena in Puglia, Italy. We spent the last lesson going over this recipe. We spoke two different languages when it came to writing a recipe. She weighs all th...
Bergamot Olive Oil Cake
A few years ago, I was in Calabria, Italy, and came across the actual Bergamot fruit (a cross between a lemon and orange). It is the familiar scent in Earl Gray Tea. I came home and developed nine rec...