If you were lucky enough to spend your Italian Easter in Naples, you may have had the chance to taste this traditional Neapolitan recipe from Campania - ricotta pie. Called la pastiera, the Italian dessert is made from shortcrust pastry, ricotta, candied fruits and the unusual ingredient of aroma of orange blossoms.

According to Barbara on Italian Notebook, you can buy the orange blossom aroma from pharmacies in Naples, while the ingredient itself is meant to represent “innocence, chastity, eternal love, marriage and fruitfulness” (from the days of the recipe being developed by nuns of the San Gregorio Armeno convent in Naples). The recipe is key to Neapolitan traditional cooking for Easter.

The recipe uses cooked durum wheat, otherwise you can buy it already pre-cooked. Ingredients for two pies are: 500 gr of flour, 250 gr of sugar, 250 gr of butter, three eggs and some vanilla powder or essence (for the pastry). For the filling: 500 gr of ricotta cheese, 275 gr of cooked durum wheat, 200 gr of milk, half a tablespoon of butter, five eggs, 250 gr of sugar, half a tablespoon of lemon zest and the same of orange zest, 25 gr of strega liqueur and 25 gr of rum.

Continue reading: Italian ricotta pie from Campania

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Italian desserts for summer range from the classic gelato to semifreddo (great if you haven’t got an icecream maker) and they also know how to do a good mousse as well. This Italian recipe uses the traditional product of lemons - famous in southern Italy and also to be found in some areas in north that enjoy patches of temperate climate. The town of Limone on Lake Garda is one, but back to our recipe.

The mousse uses yoghurt and lemons and the ingredients for four people are: 250 g of natural yoghurt, 200 g of sugar, 50 g of butter, the juice of five lemons and four eggs (separated).

Beat the egg yolks and then in a heat-proof bowl over boiling water melt the butter, add the lemon juice, sugar and yolks. Heat for 15 minutes, stirring constantly. When done, take from the heat and leave to cool. In the meantime, beat the egg whites until they form peaks. When the lemon mixture has completely cooled, add the yoghurt and fold in the egg whites.

Using four small cups or cocktail glasses, divide the mixture and leave it in the fridge for at least two hours. When serving, you can decorate with raw sugar or a little grated lemon rind.

Photo | Flickr

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Many Italians celebrate birthdays and other important events with a large fruit tart made from shortcrust pastry, custard and fresh fruit. Called a ‘crostata alla frutta’ you’ll often find it considered a traditional Italian dessert, and as we’re now in spring, we’d thought we’d bring you the recipe. Some supermarkets have shortcrust pastry bases already available, but it’s still nice to make your own. For the pastry, you’ll need the following ingredients:

350 g of flour, 150 g of sugar, 150 g of butter, three egg yolks, grated lemon skin, a little salt, and if you want it softer and not so ‘biscuity’, you can add a little yeast. Likewise, homemade custard is tastier and if you’re careful it doesn’t turn into scrambled eggs, it’s not difficult to do.

For the custard: 100 g of sugar, 100 g of flour, 500 ml of milk and two eggs. For the fruit decoration you can choose anything, seasonal fruit is best, but here you can let your imagination run wild, especially with how to decorate your tart.

Continue reading: Italian spring recipes: fresh fruit tart

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This regional Italian dish comes from the south of Italy and is particularly famous in Campania. I was very tempted to write “bloody” cake in the title but thought better of it. In any case, the name “torta di sanguinaccio” reflects the colour of the ingredients used in this sweet pie from Italy’s regional cooking.

Ingredients required are: 350 g of pork blood (best to check with your butcher about just how you might procure this - Italians never throw away anything of the pig), 250 g of cooked rice, 250 g of bread crumbs, 200 g of fig jam, some cocoa powder, 150 g of sultanas, 150 g of mixed walnuts and almonds, 150 g of sugar, 20 g of ground cinnamon and finally seven to eight cloves. For the pastry you’ll need: 500 g of flour, two tablespoons of oil and some salt.

Prepare the pastry by mixing and kneading together the ingredients. Roll it out quite thinly and place it in a pie dish. Mix all the above ingredients together to create a smooth mixture and then cook over a low heat in a casserole dish while stirring constantly. Leave it to cool and then place in the pie dish. Bake in the oven at 180° for half an hour.

Foto | Flickr

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The maritozzo is a small cake of sweetened dough typical of Rome; in the old days, this at least according to some chronicles, the maritozzi were cooked by young girls for their future husbands! Here‘s what you need (and it doesn’t matter if you are engaged or not!):

Ingredients: 200 g flour; 1 egg; a pinch of salt; 20 g sugar; 50 g butter; 20 g yeast; whipped cream.

Preparation: work the dough vigorously and then add the sugar. Cover with a cloth and leave to rest for about 3 hours; then add a pinch of salt and work again. At this point divide into 12 pieces, preheat the oven to 250 c and then bake for 6/7 minutes. In the meanwhile dissolve the sugar in a little bit of water, remove the maritozzi from the oven and sprinkle with sugar water. Put back in the warm but just turned-off oven for 10 minutes more, remove, cut each maritozzo in two and then fill with whipped cream! Delicious!

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There’s nothing like a traditional tiramisù to finish an Italian meal, but the original Italian dessert also lends itself to many variations. Here we present you with a variation of the classic tiramisù: a mascarpone and maraschino mix. It’s definitely a stronger flavour, and no heavier than the classic recipe, but for a final winter dessert fling before summer arrives, try this.

Ingredients are: 200 ml of cream, 50 gr of icing sugar, two tablespoons of maraschino, 300 g of mascarpone, cocoa powder and shaved chocolate.

Start with the cream, which should be very cold and tip it into a bowl. Add the sugar and whip. Add, drop by drop, the maraschino while still whipping. Finally, add the mascarpone a spoonful at a time. reducing the speed of the beaters and obtain a consistent texture.

Transfer it into a container (or large glass cup) and leave to refridgerate for about an hour. Dust with the cocoa powder and decorate with the shaved chocolate before serving. This is a cream dessert, so we don’t use any biscuits or cake and a nice moscato is probably the best thing to wash it down.

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If you got a lot of Italian Christmas hampers over the holiday season, or went overboard on your shopping, you’ve probably got an awful lot of panettone, pandoro or torrone to get through. Torrone is the Italian word for nougat and today we’ll look at a recipe for using it as a semifreddo dessert, in conclusion to other the Italian christmas recipes we’ve seen.

While homemade gelato can be difficult to do without an icecream machine, semifreddo is easy as you can make it just with cream and then freeze it later. If you find a good semifreddo recipe, you can make all sorts of flavours, too. For this nougat semifreddo you’ll need: 200 g of nougat (possibly dark chocolate flavour but anything will work), two eggs, four tablespoons of sugar, 200 ml of whipped cream, half a glass of brandy, chocolate flakes and fresh red currents. For a finishing sauce use 100 g of dark chocolate and 50 ml of fresh cream.

Beat the egg yolks with the sugar, put the nougat through a food mixer and then mix with the eggs, adding the brandy. Mix until you get a smooth consistency. Add the cream, then whip the egg whites and add a little at a time. Pour into a small, rectangular cake or loaf dish and put in the freezer for 5-6 hours. Take it out of the freezer about half an hour before serving and serve with the melted chocolate and cream, along with some chocolate flakes and the currents.

Source | Gustoblog.it

Photo | Flickr

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This yummy Italian Christmas recipe comes from Umbria and is a kind of walnut crunch called “le nociate”. Walnuts are frequently to be found in Italian cooking in various regions, including “nociate romane” from Rome and “copete ternane” from Terni, also in Umbria. This is a particularly simple version of this Italian dessert that many families from Perugia use.

Ingredients are: 1 kg of honey, 1 kg of crushed walnuts (the weight refers to the crushed quantity), some bay leaves. The method isn’t difficult and will fill your house with these lovely spicy perfumes. Melt the honey in a large saucepan, but be careful not to burn it. It needs to cook slowly for about a quarter of an hour. Add the crushed walnuts and mix together. Tip over a work surface (preferably marble) oiled with a little olive oil and then roll out with a rolling pin until obtaining a sheet about half a centimetre high.

Cover with bay leaves (washed and dried first) which form where you’ll cut the sheet along diamond-shaped lines. Leave the mixture to cool completely and then after you can cut this. The walnut crunch can then be eaten. Some recipe versions add a spicy touch of grated orange peel to the mix. The soften bay leaves help to eat the crunch and give it perfume, while also working as an excellent digestive to that big Christmas dinner.

Source | Gustoblog.it

Photo | Flickr

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Today we’re going to look at this traditional Italian Christmas recipe from Bologna called the certosino. It’s a kind of cake or sweetbread which is also called panspeziale or ’spiced bread’. It’s made from a series of ingredients including dried fruit, almonds, dark chocolate and pine nuts and goes back to the Medieval period when it was made by apothecaries, before the recipe was taken on by the Carthusian monks.

The Certosino di Bologna is one of those hearty Italian desserts which will wash down nicely with a strong dessert wine or port. It’s much closer to a traditional Christmas cake or fruit cake for us than other desserts we’ve seen so far and it’s perfect for a snowy winter evening. Ingredients for this version are: 500 grams of white flour, red or white wine (or half and half), 500 grams of honey, 50 grams of walnuts, 50 grams of hazelnuts, 50 grams of almonds, 200 grams of dark chocolate, 100 grams of dried figs, one heaped teaspoon of sugar, 100 gr of sultanas, 100 gr of mixed dried fruit, 20 gr of yeast, a pinch of salt, and a dusting of cinnamon and nutmeg.

From these ingredients you should be able to make about four “loaves”. Don’t try and make less and bigger loaves because otherwise the cooking time isn’t right and you risk having an uncooked centre. To start, mix the honey, flour and wine together to create a thick mixture. Add all the other ingredients, making sure that the figs are sliced, and add the yeast or rising agent last.

You can easily decorate the loaves with some of the dried fruit, for example walnut and almond halves. Place the loaves on an oven tray covered with oven proof paper and bake at 130°C for 90 minutes. Leave the loaves to cool completely in the oven before taking them out. This is the perfect recipe to create a couple of cakes which you can take with you on your Christmas visits or use for a hamper.

Source | Gustoblog.it and Wikipedia

Photo | Flickr

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This Italian recipe takes a traditional Christmas cake and adds a Nutella icing for something even more gluttonous than the usual Italian Christmas food. It’s not difficult to make and you’ll certainly add a touch of hearty calories to your Christmas lunch or dinner.

Ingredients for the cake are: three eggs, 150 grams of sugar, 50 grams of softened butter, two small tubs of natural yoghurt, a small packed of yeast or rising agent, some flour and milk and room temperature. To that you can also add a squirt of lemon juice, plenty of chopped up almonds and a few dark chocolate chips. For the icing, have aside 250 grams of mascarpone with a couple of tablespoons of nutella mixed in.

Mix the sugar and eggs together, add the butter and yoghurt and make a very smooth mixture. Add the lemon juice if desired, along with the almonds and chocolate chips. Add the milk and make up a mixture that is almost liquid. Add as much flour as needed, along with the rising agent, to create a creamy and foamy mixture.

Place the mixture in a greased cake tin and cook in the oven at 180° for 45 minutes. When done, leave the cake to cool completely before preparing the icing. Spoon over the cake the mascarpone/nutella covering. This cake is better prepared the same day as serving and could work very well with a nice after dinner port or marsala, if you’re going local.

Photo | Flickr

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