When I grew up, it is easy to take your birthday cake for granted. Sure, I expected one every year because it was a tradition in my family, but the dessert is more than that. It is something special and defines the day they were born. It includes the flavors they love, and whether it is homemade or bought in the shop, it is naturally out of her like no other dessert.
As an identical twin, the choice for the birthday cake was even more important. It was inevitable to share a birthday, but my mother knew that my sister and I needed our individuality. Your solution was simple but essential: we each have our own cake. My sister always chose an ice cake and I had my own choice that developed over the years. First I decided on a modest yellow cake with chocolate acts, as they whipped out of the box from a mix of cakes. Over time, however, I discovered another cake: Italian love cake, a dessert that felt deeply personally and strangely inevitable.
My mother sees this cake as “adult dessert”, so I didn’t have my first piece of it until my college years. After a bit, I quickly understood why my father would beg to be made that this cake was made. The three layers felt like a revelation: chocolate cake, sweetened ricotta and a chocolate pudding top. It was so simple, but still so complex in its taste and texture when the soft ricotta opened the delicate chocolaty cake and the rich, smooth pudding.
After this first time this layered, chilled dessert itself became the heart of my birthday in mid -January. Interestingly, I recently knew the official name of this cake. When I trend Italian love cakes online, I thought: “How could this cake be so Italian if I have never heard of it?” But it turned out that I had eaten it for years.
If you call this cake as a slice of heaven, it is not an exaggeration – if anything, it could be an understatement (which is a little ironic, considering that the base is made from Devil’s Food Cake). It’s airy, sweet and … cheesy, but listen to me. It is difficult to explain this cake to someone who is not Italian and I understand: the idea of a Ricotta layer in a cake may sound something strange. But for those of us who regularly eaten Ricotta, it has nothing unusual. From Ricotta cookies to this cake, Ricotta is an underestimated icon in Italian cuisine and deserves the same respect as cream cheese and cottage cheese (but don’t let me start with it). The Ricotta layer is not hearty. Instead, it is sweetened, which leads to a cheesecake -like middle class.
It took some time to fully understand how to make this cake. My mother has the habit of keeping recipes in the head or being scribbled by notes decades ago in order to adapt them during the ongoing flies without making the trouble updating the paper. Your recipe box is like a time capsule that corresponds to versions full of versions that do not quite match what she bakes today. When I asked it for the recipe to create this cake again, the measurements were eliminated, the icing was not quite right until it remembered that it had adjusted it in recent years.
What I love most about the Italian love cake is his simplicity. It does not require sophisticated steps or unusual techniques. It comes together with familiar ingredients and every disc holds beautiful. Sometimes we serve it with fresh strawberries or blueberries, but frankly you don’t need anything else. If it is time to serve, I will spend a square – not a wedge, but a perfectly historic place that tells a story of true Italian love.
For me, this cake has become more than just a birthday dessert. It has layers in more than one species; Oger have onions, Italians have this cake. Although I had to share everything else on my birthday, this is the dessert that I could count on every single year that was all. Mama’s Italian love cake will always be the best birthday present that I get.
Photos: Jason Donnelly, Essen: Sammy Mila, props: Breanna Ghazali.
