Italy In SF

I am not the best baker in the world, so for making pan di spagna I recruited the very expert help of Lucia, one of the owners of La Bottega in Menlo Park. Making pan di spagna is not hard, but it requires discipline- mix the ingrediens in the right order, warm up the oven to the right temperature, wait till the cake pans are cool before taking the cakes out, and so on. The ingredients are simple (and awfully low-fat!):

For each egg, you will need 1 oz each of sugar and flour. You will need about 8 eggs to fill a 10in pan, and a bit of butter and flour to grease the pan. That’s it! How simple is that?? Easier said than done, for sure, but it can be done!

Start separating the egg yolks from the whites. Mix the reds with the sugar till it looks almost whipped. A KitchenAid comes in handy, but an old-fashioned mixer will do the trick!

Meanwhile whip the egg whites till they are firm. Add the customar pinch of salt to make the process easier. When the yolks and sugar are well-whipped, swicth to a larger bowl and slowly fold in the egg whites with a whisk- slowly being operative word!!

Now it is time to add the flour- still by hand with a whisk, gently mix a bit of the flour at the time- making sure you sift it, so it doesn’t make clumps (is this the way you say it in English?). At the end of the process, you should get a bowl of dough naturally aerated (notice how we didn’t add any yeast?), and when you lift it from the bowl it should make a “ribbon”. This is the point where you could add a teaspoon of baking powder if you’d like, but Lucia says that’s cheating!

Now it is time to get the dough into the oven! Warm up the oven to 400 F, and grease a pan wth butter and a light veil of flour. The pan di spagna needs to get in the oven right away, otherwise it looses the natural rise that the whipped eggs give it (see the natural air bubbles?). Set the timer for 40 minutes, and make sure you do not open the oven while the pan di spagna cooks!

After the cake starts looking brown, switch the oven off but keep the door shut and the cake inside- the principle for which this works is the same that makes the souffle’ rise, so you want to be careful with it. Don’t take the cake out after cookingor the souffle’-effect will deflate! Leave inside for about 15 minutes or so, and then you can take the cake out. Don’t take the cake out o the pan quite yet, but let it cool down.

Once the pan di spagna has cooled down, you can do all sort of wonderful things with it! Cut it in half, soak with your favorite mixture, fill with whipped cream or custard and/or fruit, serve it for breakfast- the possibilities are endless! Now, remember you didn’t add any butter or oil or cream, so nutritionally as far as dessert goes this is a pretty nice deal, carrying only the fats in the eggs. In my book, it means I can be more generous with fats in the filling!In our case, we cut it…

Then we soaked it with blended strawberries mixed with a bit of rum:

Then we added a homemade crema, an Italian custard. We picked a glass bowl for assembly so the dessert would look really pretty!

Fresh strawberries marinated in a bit of sugar:

Then another layer of pan di spagna that we soaked with the same mixture of the base layer:

We finished off the pan di spagna with whipped cream:

Finally, let it rest for a few hours in the fridge before serving. Thanks Lucia!

Filed under: Traditional Foods