December 14

You may be familiar with panettone or pandoro, Italian sweets most closely associated with Christmas. But there is another option, the "ciambellone", a kind of ring cake commonly made at Easter, but also made to adorn the Christmas sweet table.

Last week, on one of my favourite cookery shows -- La prova del cuoco -- Anna Moroni made a ciambellone, and I managed to scribble down the recipe.  I tested it out the other day, and apart from the fact that I baked it in too big a pan, and a little bit too long, it turned out rather well.

It's easy, looks pretty, tastes pretty good, and is not too sweet.

Be forewarned -- most of the ingredients are in metric weight, as that's how they were given, and that's how I cook (the scale is your friend).   But if you are a curious cook, you will be rewarded for making the effort to bake this.

Ciambellone

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.  Butter and flour a Bundt® or ring pan.

Ingredients:

3 eggs
250 g sugar
130 g olive oil
130 g milk or water (I made mine with milk)
250 g flour
1 tsp baking powder
grated zest of one lemon
50mL (3 tablespoons) Limoncello liqueur

With mixer, blend eggs and sugar.  Add olive oil and milk.

Sift together the flour and baking powder.  Add to the wet ingredients.

Add lemon zest and Limoncello liqueur.  Stir to blend.

Pour into cake pan.  Bake for 50 minutes, or until a tester inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Let cool ten minutes.  Turn out onto serving dish.  When cake is cool, dust with icing sugar.

Comments

[Ted]

What kind of olive oil did you use? I'm assuming not extra-extra virgin...the bright green stuff.