Directions
Sbrisolona is a cake to be prepared and eaten at any time of the year, but above all, it is a dessert created to be soaked in an excellent sweet wine. Its hard and dry texture is an invitation to soak the cake in sweet nectar to create one of the most delicious combinations of the Italian tradition. The wines are usually those of the Mantuan-Emilian area: Malvasia and Moscato, or Lambrusco if you are a tough guy.
The origin of the sbrisolona cake is ancient, but above all humble, the ingredients are poor from the countryside: corn flour, lard, and almonds, but over time it has become a symbol of luxury and sumptuousness due to its richness of flavors. If you are on a diet, we warn you that the dose of butter is very high.
The name Sbrisolona comes from brisa, crumb, due to the grainy and hard consistency of the cake. It must be roughly kneaded and then dropped large crumbs into the pan. We propose today the original Mantuan recipe, but with a greater quantity of butter that replaces the lard.
Ingredients and doses of the Sbrisolona cake
- 400 grams of flour
- 400 grams of cornflour
- 400 grams of sugar
- 450 grams of softened butter
- 1 egg
- 3 egg yolks
- 200 grams of almonds
- the peel of 1 untreated lemon
- the tip of a teaspoon of salt
- 1 vanilla pod
How to prepare the Mantuan Sbrisolona cake
The recipe is straightforward, there are just a couple of tips to follow.
First: don’t chop the almonds too much.
Second: the dough must be coarse, not compact and homogeneous. Indeed it must have the consistency of many crumbs. But at the same time, make sure that the butter has soaked all the flour well, otherwise use a drop of water to bind.
The doses must be respected: flour, butter, and sugar are present in equal quantities, and the number of eggs corresponds to the hectograms of flour.
Let’s go!
Keep a dozen almonds aside to decorate the cake and coarsely chop the rest.
In the mixer, mix the butter with the sugar for 5 minutes. Suppose your passion is to make desserts or feel the sacred fire of the Sacher within you. In that case, we recommend a purchase that will change your life: the KitchenAid Artisan planetary mixer, an instrument, once tried, will allow you to reduce manual work monstrously. And the time of preparation of desserts. In this way, you will be able to do more operations simultaneously, and you too can enjoy more recipes with less “work” stress. So don’t think that using a planetary mixer is playing dirty. They manage to incorporate much more air into the dough. From pastry chefs to pizza chefs, nobody kneads with their hands now. On the contrary, we dedicate ourselves more to researching ingredients, experimenting with doses, and new recipes.
Closed the advertisement parenthesis, and let’s go back to our dessert. Cut the vanilla pod in half and scratch the inside with a small knife to recover the seeds and pulp. Grate the lemon.
Add the vanilla, salt, peel, chopped almonds, eggs to the mixture and then pour in the flour.
Now be careful to find the right consistency, all the ingredients must mix, but the mixture must resemble shortcrust pastry, be raw, reduced to crumbs.
Line a 26-30 cm cake pan with parchment paper and let the mixture fall, being careful to cover the entire surface of the pan. Close all the holes, but do not smooth out the dough.
Sow the whole almonds on top of the dough and bake in a preheated oven at 170 degrees for 40 minutes.
When cooked, take it out of the oven and let it cool completely.
When serving, break it with your hands, never with a knife.
Which wine to pair with the Sbrisolona cake?
We choose a sweet and sparkling wine, aromatic, full of freshly blossomed flowers such as Malvasia from the Lamoretti winery.
If you prefer to combine a cocktail, the sweetness of the Godfather falls like a bean, but even with the Pina Colada, it’s delicious!
