Delicious Torta Mantovana Recipe from Tuscany
Torta Mantovana Recipe: It’s a rainy Sunday! Why not preparing a simple yet incredibly tasty Tuscan cake from my grandmother Nonna Nada’s recipe book? 🙂 The Torta Mantovana Cake!
Perfect for breakfast or for a healthy and genuine snack, the Mantovana cake is a fragrant specialty, with a soft dough and an intense color. It is a simple and homemade dessert, a pantry cake, to have always available when you have the desire for something sweet but light or when a guest surprises with a visit.
This wonderful and tasty cake is typical from the city of Prato, near Florence; probably its origins date back as far as to the year 1490, when Isabella d’Este gave this recipe as a gift to the Medici court, the powerful family ruling Florence during the Renaissance period.
Isabella d’Este was just 16 years old when she married Francesco di Gonzaga, so becoming Marchesa di Mantova, hence the name of the cake.
It’s a very soft, yellow and fragrant cake, with a very quick preparation, ideal for a typical Italian breakfast accompanied with coffee or tea.
Ingredients to make the Torta Mantovana
170 gr of flour
170 gr of sugar
150 gr of butter
1 egg and 4 yolks
80 gr of almonds and pine nuts
1 lemon zest
How to make the pastry for the cake:
First of all mix all the eggs with the sugar, you can do it by hand but also using a mixer. Then add the flour little by little and blend very well, and finally add the butter previously melted.
Put the pastry in a pan, cut the almonds and the pine nuts to pieces and put them over its surface. The thickness of the cake should be rather thin. Put all in the oven, that needs to be preheated at a moderate temperature, around 150 degrees. Then let it cool and decorate with icing sugar.
The result will be a success 🙂 this fantastic cake is perfect to be served as a dessert or to have a great breakfast.
And what about you? Have you have tried a similar recipe?
