Improvised apple cake
This summer I joked a lot about me longing for autumn. July was just so unbearable hot and damp that I won't deny that I regretted not visiting my mother and brother in Dublin and working there for a month. I prepared lots of salads and ate a lot of fruit, although I only seem to share recipes with apples 😛 . The truth is that, having the IBS, I can't eat apples... so I buy them for some still lifes and then, just before they go bad, I get angry at myself and don't want to waste food ... so I use them in a recipe.
This mini and quite rustic apple cake was improvised, as I had finished all the sugar at home and replaced it with icing sugar and added crushed amaretti to be sure it was sweet enough! I made it on a dull day after a visit to the Doges Palace in Piazza San Marco.
I try to go to the Palazzo Ducale at least once a month and, being so rich in paintings, artwork and history, only focus on a couple of works at a time.
Besides, at the Ducale they started an initiative called 'Guest at the palace', thus they display an artwork for a limited period of time and that exalt the role of Venice and its major figures in European history and culture. This initiative started with the marvelous Maria Maddalena in estasi by Artemisia Gentileschi, which is still visible in the quadreria, placed just next to an outstanding Portrait of a Lady and her daughter by Titian (identical to the one in Antwerp).
This time, instead, I am sharing some photos taken in July when I saw the current one
I am talking about "The Last Senate of the Republic of Venice" by Vittorio Emanuele Bressanin (1860-1941), a painter I didn't know from Musile di Piave . The painting depicts an elderly senator descending the Giants' Staircase, in 1797, the year of the fall of the Republic. On May 15 of that year, the last doge Ludovico Manin left the Palazzo Ducale forever and Bressanin is showing the feelings of estrangement of those days.
I enjoyed it and appreciated the photographic cut and the vivid color of the gown, in the red that distinguished the magistrates of the Pregadi (the members of the Venetian senate) from all the other patricians of Venice.
With this said, I hope you will have the chance to visit the Doge's Palace soon too and that you will like the recipe :)
RECIPE
MINI RUSTIC APPLE AND AMARETTI CAKE
Ingredients (15 cm diameter mould):
1 apple
8/10 crushed amaretti
1/2 lemon
1 free range egg
1 tablespoon icing sugar
100 gr yogurt
100 gr 00 flour
1 teaspoon
7 gr baking powder
1 teaspoon honey (optional)
Method:
Sift flour, cinnamon and baking powder and keep aside.
Peel the apple, remove core, chop half into small cubes and the other into thin wedges. Put in two bowls with some lemon juice and most of the crushed amaretti cookies.
Whisk the egg with the icing sugar, once nice and foamy add the yogurt and gradually the dry ingredients. the apples cut into cubes and pour into a previously greased baking pan.
Place the apple wedges on the top, garnish with the remaining amaretti and -if you like- a little bit of honey. Bake for 20 minutes at 180°.
Let cool and serve :)
