Torta Sbrisolona
A Fabulous way to finish a meal along-side a glass of sweet dessert wine, or as a treat with a cup of tea for afternoon tea! Torta Sbrisolona comes from the beautiful town of Mantova in Italy.
Servings: 1 to 2 cakes
Ingredients
- 200 g Butter 3/4 cup (or 100 g butter and 100g lard) - at room temperature
- 150 g Sugar 3/4 cup
- 250 g White flour 1 2/3 cup
- 200 g Cornmeal 1 1/3 cup -that's fine meal used to make polenta....NOT cornstarch/cornflour
- Lemon zest from 1 lemon
- 2 Egg yolks
- 50 g Non-peeled almonds 1/3 cup
- 150 g Peeled almonds 1 cup
- 1 sachet Vanilla sugar or add 1 tsp of vanilla essence
Instructions
- Just a note about the cornmeal before starting the recipe. I used extremely finely ground cornmeal to make it (which I so far haven't seen outside of Italy), but I'm sure it would turn out well with more coarsely ground cornmeal that is used for making polenta. Just try to find the finest you can.
- Heat the oven to 180 degrees C (350F).
- Chop both lots of almonds into coarse chunks. Leave a few unpeeled ones whole to scatter on the top at the end.
- Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix them carefully until they are just combined. DO NOT OVER-MIX.
- Sprinkle the mixture, as shown in the photo above, into a greased tart pan that is at least 25cm in diameter. I used a cake-tin with removable sides, and for the extra dough, a pie dish.
- Pat it down just slightly and VERY GENTLY. DO NOT press down hard. It should be a quite loose mixture and not pressed together.
- Sprinkle the whole almonds over the top.
- Sprinkle a tablespoon of sugar over the top. I used brown cassonade sugar, but white sugar is fine.
- Bake for 35 - 40 minutes, or until golden brown.
- Leave in the pan to cool and then carefully extract it from the pan.
Notes
To eat torta sbrisolona, break it into pieces.