Tuesday, August 26, 2008

CAPRESE – The “Not-For-Everyone" Cake






Capri (that’s the root of the term “caprese”) is one of the beautiful islands of my Country. It’s a little jewel on the sea and it gave the name at least to a couple interesting dishes of the Italian traditional cuisine.

One is the refreshing, nutrient salad that everyone knows and that you can find in almost every Italian family dinner menu in the summertime, when everyone is just too tired or too hot to cook: tomato and fresh mozzarella, a few leaves of basil, olive oil.

The other, maybe less famous but certainly not less important or less interesting, is this intriguing sinful chocolate cake. It might not have the looks that some more renowned chocolate cakes have: no pretty icing, no rich filling, no attractive decoration, but I promise you it just tastes great. Like those precious things that you need to WANT to discover, looking beyond what’s obvious to everyone. And when you do you consider yourself very fortunate.
It’s a cake for true dark chocolate lovers. It does not contain any flour or baking powder whatsoever, and it melts in your mouth when you have a bite. It’s simply made of dark chocolate, almonds, eggs, butter and sugar.

Even the sugar is not one of the main ingredients, as there’s not much of it so what you get is a cake that is not particularly sweet. That probably does not fit the average American taste since, generally speaking, everything here is pretty sweet. But if you are into bitter chocolate I’m pretty sure you will love this.

Just add a spoon of semi-whipped cream to it, if you like, and that’s it. It’s a test: if you’re truly a part of the chocolate lovers club, you’ll appreciate it very much.

1 comment:

Esmé said...

Brava!
Sai che è la mia torta preferita. E che questa è la mia ricetta preferita della Caprese. Ce ne sono in giro tante, che prevedono farina, lievito, vanillina, ma non fidatevi: questa è quella da intenditori.
Bassa ma soffice, dal cuore morbido, ricca nella sua eleganza sobria ma lussuosa. La panna appena sbattuta, senza zucchero aggiunto, è davvero il suo accompagnamento perfetto.
Aggiungo, per gli Americani - che la sanno lunga su queste faccende -, che tra le torte è una (quasi) perfetta ricetta low carb. A parte lo zucchero, che è poco ma c'è. Ma l'Indice Glicemico (IG) resta ancora basso, mentre l'Indice Godurioso è altissimo.