I now live in this wonderful part of Italy, known for the villas of famous footballers and Hollywood stars. The lake and its villages are fairytale-like.
One place in particular captivated me: Lenno. Its lakeside promenade is delightful, and Villa del Balbianello is a must-see. When I’m there, I eat at a restaurant run by two sisters called “il Grifo.” One of the sisters, a chef, revisits lakeside recipes with a modern twist. It was here that I tasted this humble dessert for the first time. Unfortunately, the recipe isn’t hers, though I hope to steal it from her one day, but it’s mine. I’ve modified the quantities over time and now even if the doses are always the same, while the stale bread I use is a mix and match (oil rolls, homemade bread, buns, broches, focaccia), so the dessert always has a different flavor.
Miascia: a traditional Como cake
- Preparation time: 20 minutes +. baking
- Ingredients for a 24 cm baking pan
- Difficulty: Easy recipe
- Ingredients
- 500 ml of milk
- 250 grams of mixed stale bread
- 80 grams of raisins
- 20 grams of pine nuts
- 2 apples
- 2 eggs
- 80 grams of granulated sugar
- 35 ml Amaretto liqueur
- 3 amaretti biscuits
- 50 grams of dark chocolate
- 1 sprig rosemary
- Salt to taste
- Butter for greasing the pan, to taste
- Breadcrumbs or cornmeal, to taste
- Instructions
- Cut the stale bread and amaretti biscuits into cubes.
- Boil the milk with a pinch of salt. Add the bread and let the mixture rest until room temperature. Finally, pass it through a food mill with a coarse mesh.
- Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F).
- Soak the raisins in a bowl with hot water, then drain and squeeze.
- Peel the apples and dice them.
- Beat the eggs with the sugar.
- Add the chopped fruit, raisins, roughly chopped chocolate, liqueur, and the beaten eggs to the breadcrumbs.
- Pour into a greased and floured baking pan, dusted with breadcrumbs or cornflour. Sprinkle the surface with pine nuts and top with a sprig of rosemary.
- Reduce the oven temperature to 160°C (320°F) and bake for fifty minutes.
Tips to ensure the success of the dish:
- I use any type of bread; I also love mixing them and adding pieces of brioche and focaccia.
- The dough in the pan shouldn’t be too thick, around 4 cm maximum.
- If you want it a little bit sweeter, you can also use pears.
- This version uses chocolate, as I saw at the restaurant in Lenno, but if you prefer plain, that’s fine.
