Torta di Mele, Italy's favorite Apple Cake

This time of the year when the mountains are decked out with the autumnal color change of the trees, we are in the thick of apple season. I imagine that most of you in the northern hemisphere are as well.   Not a bad time of the year at all. The colors on our hills are really going all out now that the larch have kicked in for the upping of the yellow ante.

I've been making a wide variety of apple delights with our apple abundance and thought I must share an apple recipe as I haven't posted any type of recipe in awhile.  This weekend nearby the commune of Cavour kicks off it's 10 day apple festival. Piedmont has 52 varieties according to our friend Dario of Frutto Permesso, (the permitted fruit), the organic growers not so far from us that produce some delicious pear and apple juices.  To get into the spirit I thought I would share one of Italy's favorite recipes, Torta di Mela. This much loved cake has a number of vatiations as I have seen and tasted over the years. I grew up in apple country in southern Illinois and we had our fair share of apple festivals, apple cakes and of course the al time favorite apple pie. My mother use to made a simple apple snacking cake that was similar to the more simple versions of this Italian apple cake. Today, I'm sharing a slighty more sophisticated version, but it does come together quite easily enough, especially if you don't bother with the decorative sweep of the thinly sliced apples. It will taste just great and look more rustic.

Torta di Mele

8-10 servings -- 26cm/10" cake round

or 22 cm/9" cake round is the same servings

Ingredients:

2 large eggs, room temperature for more volume

150g (5 oz / 3/4c) sugar, I like brown grezzo sugar

185g (6.5 oz / 1 7/8c) flour, sifted with

1 tsp baking powder

120ml (4fl oz / 1/2c) milk

zest of 1/2 lemon

50g (3.5T) butter, use for greasing your pan and cut the rest up into small pieces to sprinkle over the top of the cake before baking 

23g (3T) bread crumbs, plain and stale, not too fine

1kg (2.2lb)** apples, peeled and thinly sliced, medium to sweet apples for a soft, sweet cake*

24g (2T) coarse brown  or white sugar, for sprinkling on top. 

**Update: I find that I have been making this cake in a 22 cm/ 9" pan with 500g / 5 cups or 1.1 pound apples and it seems to bake through more evenly. I like a slightly tart apple, rennet and grigia di toriani. 

Macintosh, pink lady, Braeburn, Jonathons  in the US, to name just a few. 

Cooks notes: I found this online about fuji apples 

"Three medium-sized Fuji apples weigh approximately one pound.

One pound of apples, cored and sliced, measures about 4 1/2 cups."

Recent version - the 22cm size with 500g/ 5 cups apple 

Method:

Preheat your oven to 180*C (350*F) and prepare you cake pan.

Prepare your pan. I use a spring form pan as I find it helpful for easy removal. You might consider lining your cake pan with parchment paper if using a regular round cake tin, to ensure your cake removes easily. I your spring form pan ring doesn't fit tight around the bottom pan, you might line it with paper.

Lightly butter your 26 cm (10 inch) pan with some of the measured butter. Cut up the remainder into small pieces and set aside.

Dust your tin with your bread crumbs and tip any excess amount out for use at some other time. 

Set aside.

Usually I peel, quarter and thinly slice my apples at this point. I try to keep the quarters intact as I thinly slice them on the cutting board, to make it easy to fan the slices out decoratively.

Beat your eggs with a mixer until frothy and light colored. 

Gradually begin to add the sugar to the eggs.

Add half of you milk to the egg and sugar mix.

Then I hand whisk in the flour, zest and baking powder.

Add the rest of the milk, handling as little as possible, yet fully incorporating the dry ingredients. 

Your mixture will be fairly runny.

Pour your batter into the pan.

Arrange your thin apple slices  around the perimeter of the pan, filling the center in as needed.

Sprinkle the coarse 2T sugar on top of the apples and dot the butter around the top.

Becasue my oven runs hot, I cover my cake with aluminum foil for the first 20- 25 minutes to keep the apple from getting too brown.

I uncover and finish baking the cake until the cake is set and golden brown, about 55 minutes, depending on your oven. 

Cool completely before removing from your pan. The spring form does allow you to be able to remove it while it is slight warm. 

I dust with a bit of confectioner sugar for a finishing touch, but not always.  

Serve at room temperature and enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.

Trust me, it won't last long. 

Not Quite a Figgy Pudding

I'm done playing tourist for awhile, but still have lots of photos and stories to tell, but thought I would put in a fig cake recipe that I have been wanting to share for awhile. I had the perfect opportunity to add it to "Cream Puffs in Venice's" hosting of Sugar High Friday # 35 if only could keep up. Oh well, even if I don't end up in the list of offerings, I will at least have added this delightful cake to the blogosphere. This torte features a couple of my favorite foods, hazelnuts and fresh figs, two ingredients that weren't so readily available where I lived in the US, but have come to deeply appreciate their availability here in Europe. I can almost reconcile myself to the fact that pecans aren't available here when hazelnuts are. Living in Piedmont/Piemonte, Italy, with nearby Alba, home of Ferrero Rocher's famed Nutella , hazelnuts are readily available and an welcome addition to many of my baked treats. Although we are right on the border of the fig growing region, we still have had a good season this year, enough for tortes and fig jam too. I found this recipe a few years ago thumbing thru an Italian magazine and photographed the page as it wasn't mine, and now have forgotten which publication i got it out of. More than likely it was Cucina Italiana.
So make a great cuppa of your favorite brew and enjoy this light and nutty fig treat.

Torta di Fichi Neri (o Verdi) e Nocciole
(Black or Green Fig and Hazelnut Cake)

150 g butter, room temperature
120 g sugar, granulated
120 g pastry flour
2 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
2 tsp Vanilla
pinch salt

120 g Hazelnuts, whole, very lightly toasted, then chopped fine*
8 whole fresh figs, green or black, (more if you like) washed and cut in half length wise

If you need to convert this to your measurement, try using Bron Marshall's very helpful
Cookery Unit Converter

Butter and flour a 26cm or 10" cake or spring form pan.
Use 40 grams of your chopped tasted hazelnuts to liberally sprinkle around the bottom and sides of the pan. I usually hand chop the nuts and use the finer crumbs for the pan and the coarser pieces for the cake later on. *My personal preference is a coarser chop so that the nut is recognizable later when you sprinkle it on top. They will toast more as they bake, so don't toast too far in the beginning.

In a medium to large mixing bowl, whip the butter with the sugar till lightened in color and texture. The whipping is what is going to make your cake rise without any other help from baking powder or soda.
Add the egg yolks and whole eggs and continue whipping till homogeneous and fluffy, being care not to over whip so that it starts to break down and separate. Add vanilla and a pinch of salt and blend. I add the flour to the butter/sugar/egg mixture by sifting it in through a large strainer, and gingerly hand mixing it with a whisk or rubber spatula, to insure a light cake.
Handle as little as possible and turn the batter into your prepared pan and smooth out. Place your cut side figs down in the batter in a ring, with the marrow part towards the middle of the cake. Sprinkle the rest of your chopped hazelnuts on top and bake in a preheated 160C or 300* oven till lightly brown and the middle is set. Cool before removing from the pan.