Schiaccia briaca

Few people outside Elba would have heard of this cake. The name roughly translates as ‘drunken tart’. I could make a million jokes about this but it’s hardly necessary.

As long as I can remember, every Easter or Christmas or special occasion, my nonna would make this along with paneforte. My mother has made it less regularly, but has thrown herself into the practice of late, perhaps for nostalgic reasons. This Christmas, for the first time, she showed me how to make it, an exchange of knowledge from mother to daughter which has been happening for decades, perhaps centuries.

Neither my nonna nor my mother used an official, written recipe, albeit they do exist.

http://www.altacucinasociety.com/recipes_detail.asp?id=83

There is even a group on Facebook dedicated to this unassuming but incredibly tasty cake.

Here is what my mother showed me:

Take a cup of raw walnuts and almonds, chopped, and a cup of sultanas.

Add half a cup of sugar, a pinch of salt and two cups of self-raising flour. Mix.

Taste. Add more sugar if needed. The dry ingredients should feel lumpy but not too lumpy or the cake will fall apart easily when cut.

Combine a cup of Muscat with a cup of olive oil. Working quickly, add the wet ingredients to the dry, adding more flour if need be to make a stiff dough. Press into a medium sized lined cake tin. Make indentations in the top of the dough and then sprinkle sugar and some oil and Muscat mixed together over the top.

Bake in a medium oven until brown and a skewer comes out clean.

In my first attempt I used raisins instead of sultanas. I will try making it with some pine nuts and honey next time around.

When my husband and I went to Elba four years ago it was was autumn, the off-season for tourists and very quiet. We couldn’t find a proper bakery to buy some Schiaccia and the locals warned us off the commercial stuff. On Elba, Schiaccia has a pinkish crust because they tend to used Aleatico rather than Muscat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleatico