Do you remember when we made Sponge cake during our last visit to my parents in law in Italy? Well the recipe for the sponge cake is on my earlier post from the holidays.
This weekend we had another lovely treat, when my husband cooked sponge cake for us. We had the cherries from outside as the filling, together with whipped cream, ummm, it was a lovely treat!
Friday 1 January 2010
Today you will never guess what happens. At long last, how many days has it been now. The sponge cake is finally cut. The cake was no longer fresh and I must admit I was not at all keen on the sponge cake now. So I didn’t have a piece. But I am sure it was very nice. Everyone else had some cake and enjoyed it. I think it was the vermouth they savoured wasn’t it? He he 
We had gnocchi for lunch today. Handmade naturally!
It rained very heavily last night and today it continued to rain on and off. It was drizzling whenever it stopped raining. I wanted to go out nevertheless. However my dear Giuseppe didn’t want to leave the safety and comfort of the house, so it turned out I was to spend the entire day house bound.
Thankfully I had a book with me that I we had bought in Salerno (in English) that kept me busy today. I also took the opportunity to go through the photos we had taken last night of the fireworks. I could not believe we had over 500 photos! That took some time sorting through to select the ones I wanted to post.
Thursday 31 December 2009 – PM
It was 4pm and before we headed out for the day we helped my Mother-in-law to make the custards for the sponge cake. The first custard was made that was a typical yellow colour and it was cooked with a lemon rind in the saucepan.
The second custard was basically the same mixture but with cocoa added to give it a chocolate flavour. After these both finished cooking we poured each of these out to a separate dish to cool down. Now it was time to go back down to Scario.
It was a relief to have finally made it to the internet kiosk today, because it was closed when I had arrived yesterday. They do not have any set opening hours so it is always hit and miss. While I was writing up this blog, Giuseppe took my nephew Lorenzo for a photographic expedition along the coast, and they took turns to take photos.
Lorenzo had a lot of fun and thoroughly enjoyed using the camera. Actually I was a little surprised that Giuseppe allowed him to use the camera. But I understand he was supervising to make sure nothing could get broken. The two of them walked past Scario and along the coast. Their photos of the cliffs there reminded me of the boat trip we took along the coast last year at our wedding.
By the time we arrived home time was getting on, and it was almost 6pm. The custard had cooled by now and so my Mother-in-law went about cutting up the sponge cake, pouring Vermouth over the cake, and adding the custard between the layers of cake. While this was being done, Giuseppe whipped up some cream, and then this was used to mix together with the chocolate sauce, and the rest of it was spread over the very top layer of the sponge cake for decoration.
While this was all going on I began making the chocolate Afghans that I had been looking forward to. The idea came to me because I still had half a box of cornflakes that needed to be used. My Mother emailed me the recipe she uses that comes from the New Zealand Edmonds Cooking Book. Paloma had also given me a copy of the Edmonds Cooking Book, but of course my copy was at home, and not with me on holiday. Naturally it had not occurred to me to bring it with me on holiday, but given that our suitcase was lost by the airline, then I’m very glad I did not pack it.
Below is the recipe we got from the Edmonds book for Chocolate Afghans. The thing that I would probably change though if making these biscuits again would be to halve the amount of butter and double the amount of cornflakes for a great crunch.
Ingredients:
200g ( 7 ozs.) butter
25g ( 1 ozs ) cocoa
75g ( 3 ozs ) sugar
50 g ( 2 ozs ) cornflakes
175g ( 6ozs ) flour
Method:
Soften butter, add sugar and beat to a cream; add flour, cocoa and lastly cornflakes. Put tea spoonful on a crease oven tray and bake about 15 minutes about 180 c or 350 F. When cold, ice with chocolate icing (or melted chocolate) and put half a walnut on the top of each biscuit.
We had a lovely meal together and then afterwards we went down to Scario to see the fireworks. There was a bonfire and music, and as an extra treat we also got to see the fireworks from all the other villages around the Coast, from Policastro, Sapri, and beyond.
Wednesday 30 December 2009
Today we phoned EasyJet again to sort out our lost suitcase. We had no luck, we were told the file is still closed. They said they had sent messages to Naples airport but they had not received any response.
The problem is that their file is closed because they said Naples airport had said that we collected our suitcase. Which as you know never happened. So it seems peculiar that our suitcase was lost and yet they should say that we had collected it. It makes you wonder if someone had not stolen it, whether in England or Italy, we do not know. So we wondered whether we ought to report our suitcase as lost and/or stolen to the police. We drove up to Torre Orsaia to speak to the local police cabinieri. Giuseppe explained the situation to them and that we wanted to report our suitcase as lost or stolen.
Lunch was particularly appetising today. We had French fries with buffalo meat. In addition we had a French stick and buffalo mozzarella, hmmm, excellent!
Lately I’ve been thinking about bon boniere, and have enjoyed looking through the books and magazines in town on the subject. From there I started thinking of coffee cake and biscuits. I made some snow balls the other day. I couldn’t find any weetbix in the supermarket but I did locate a box of cornflakes. I used this with some condensed milk and coconut, and just a touch of boiling hot water. But I still have about half a box of cornflakes left, so am now planning to make some chocolate afghans tomorrow for New Years. Perhaps some anzac biscuits too?
Today however we had a cooking lesson with Giuseppe’s Mother who taught us to make sponge cake. She uses a large tin for her sponge cake as she makes enough to satisfy the whole family.
Sponge Cake
Ingredients: (English)
9 eggs
9 spoons of sugar
9 spoons of flour
1 portion of yeast (pane degli angeli)
Ingrediente: (Italiano)
9 uova
9 cucchiai rasi di zucchero
9 cucchiai rasi di farina
1 bustina di lievito (pane degli angeli)
Method
It is very quick to make the sponge cake. There are twenty steps as follows:
Take two large bowls. Then get your nine eggs and separate them between the two bowls. You will need to break each egg and carefully put all the egg whites into one bowl, and all the egg yolks into a separate bowl.
Take nine table spoons of sugar and add that into your bowl that contains the egg yolks.
Mix the sugar with the egg yolks.
Add the nine table spoons of flour to your egg yolks.
Stir the mixture of the egg yolks.
Continue stirring the egg yolk mixture until you see air bubbles appearing on the surface of your mixture.
Now grease the tin for your sponge cake using a bit of butter and baking paper.
Next get some baking paper and cut in around the bottom of the cake tin so that you end up with a round circle (if your cake tin is square then you will end up with a square shape instead, and so on).
Place the circle inside the bottom of your cake tin, and now turn the oven on to warm it up. Turn the oven on to 150 degrees celcius.
Now get an electric egg beater and beat your egg whites.
Continue beating your bowl of egg whites until the mixture becomes thick enough that it is now stiff.
Take your stiff egg whites and pour them into the bowl containing the egg yolks.
Now using a spoon, gently stir the stiff egg whites into the egg yolk mixture.
Now add in the secret ingredient, that is, the one portion of yeast (pane degli angeli). Remember to use a sift for the yeast powder.
Gently mix the yeast into your mixture.
Now pour your sponge mixture into the cake tin.
Don’t forget to scrape out everything from your baking bowl into the tin.
Now put the cake tin into the oven which by now will be hot.
Wait thirty minutes and then check on your sponge cake.
Use a knife (or similar item) and place it in the cake. If the knife comes out completely clean then you know your cake has finished baking. However if your knife comes out with mixture on it and is sticky, then you will need to put your cake back in a for about another five or ten minutes or so until it has finished baking.This afternoon we went for a drive down to Sapri to visit the new commercial centre. We just went grocery shopping but it was gorgeous to see the view on the drive down there. Even though it was just 4pm in the afternoon, the moon was out and there was a pinky orange sunset over the hills that had turned the mountain the colour of purple and red.
On the way home we stopped at the Chinese clothing store in Policastro. I was very pleased that finally, at long last, I have found something else for me to wear, except for the same black trousers day after day. We bought a practical long skirt for me to wear. It is elastic and very comfortable, made from lambs wool and is a charcoal and grey colour. It was 19 euros and we thought that was very reasonable given it was made in Italy and was new.
Later this evening we decided to head back down to Scario because we had heard there was something going on around 10pm, some sort of musical event. We went down and they were playing music with English lyrics. I thought it was funny there wasnt any Italian music, but then the guy on the loud speaker was calling the event Scario Young 2009, so I think it was targeting young people, who may perhaps prefer English music, I do not know.
