This is Marcella Hazan’s Sbricciolona—crumbly cake. It isn’t glamorous. It isn’t fancy. But damn it is delicious!
Ingredients
- 110g of the freshest ground almonds you can get
- 210g (1 1/2 cups) plain flour
- 2/3 cup cornmeal
- 105g (5/8 cup) caster sugar
- 2 egg yolks
- 110g butter, softened to room temperature
- grated peel of one lemon
- 28cm springform pan, well greased with more butter
Method
Preheat the oven to 190°C.
Put the dry ingredients — flour, cornmeal, caster sugar, grated lemon peel and ground almonds — in a bowl and mix well.
Add the two egg yolks and rub them through the dry ingredients with your fingers until the mixture breaks up into little pellets. (A lot like the proper method of making scones if you are familiar with that!)
Now add the butter and keep rubbing with your fingers until it is completely worked into the mixture. I am going to quote Marcella exactly now. At first it may seem improbable that all the ingredients can ever by combined, but after working them for a few minutes, you will find they do hang together, forming a dry crumbly dough. It will be very crumbly! Don’t worry too much about this because in the next step you…
Crumble the dough through you fingers into the greased pan (this is fun, isn’t it!), filling the bottom of the pan evenly. Give it a little pat. Not a firm pat, just a ‘there there’ kind of pat.
Pop the cake into the oven and let it cook for 40 minutes. Check it at the half hour mark to make sure it isn’t browning too much. If it is, pop a piece of baking paper over the top of the pan.
Let it cool completely. Then break it into fabulously uneven pieces and enjoy it heartily. With a glass of something chilled and a little sweet (Marcella suggest vin santo), some dairy (creme fraiche anyone?) and maybe some berries.