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A soft and fragrant cake, topped with icing sugar and a chocolate lily

This flat cake is a Florentine tradition during the Carnival period, even if bakeries start making it much earlier and keep serving it once Carnival is over.

It can be enjoyed “plain” or stuffed, often with cream or Chantilly cream.

This is the queen of Tuscan cakes, the Schiacciata alla Fiorentina.

Here it’s explained by the bakers from the Forno di Ciappi and Chellini, in via Senese, in Sambuca (Tavarnelle Val di Pesa).

The “recipe”. For this cake we use the same dough used to make brioches.

The other ingredients are: orange and cinnamon flavouring, egg, sugar, flour, butter.

It is, by definition of the same pastry chef, a preparation that requires a lot of attention, and many eggs. The dough should be “loosened” slowly by inserting the eggs until it becomes very soft.

At Sambuca they take the finishing touches very seriously: “Powdered sugar and a Florentine lily made with cocoa, go on all the Schiacciate alla Fiorentina that we produce!”.

At Forno di Ciappi and Chellini in Sambuca, Pierluigi Ciappi and Giuseppe Chellini carry on something that isn’t just a tradition, but History with a capital H.

“There has been a bakery here – they tell us – since the 15th century. Before it used to be located on the opposite side of the via Senese, in front of where our shop is today”.

We are in the historical part of Sambuca, a few meters from the beautiful Roman bridge on the Pesa river.

“We’ve been here since 1990 – they explain – Uncle Dante and a pastry chef named Emilio taught us. All our special secrets we owe to them”.

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