Spongata cake is a recipe from Emilia that has very ancient origins. Signs of its ancestors can be traced to Etruscan, Jewish, and Roman cultures.
In medieval times, nuns and monks reworked the recipe. Little by little, and that is the history of all the panspeziale (spice cakes) and panforte of Europe, the spongata cake left the convents and entered even the kitchens of the great Italian lordships, becoming a typical Christmas dessert, somewhat like what also happened to the Certosino of Bologna and the Panpepato of Ferrara.
A little bit of its history
Spongata cake is mentioned in the abbey of San Colombano of Bobbio (Parma) documents, perhaps for the first time. In the monastery’s 1194 Diplomatic Codex, the monks gifted this cake to tenants who paid their debts as a Christmas present.
Other sources lead to the Benedictine nuns’ convent in Reggio Emilia, where the abbess Serafina Bonino, toward the end of the 15th century, put her hand to an ancient recipe for spongata cake about which the apothecary from Brescello (a small town close to the city of Reggio Emilia) had told her.
The man explained the abbess that the dessert had even been appreciated decades earlier at the illustrious court of the Sforza family, lords of Milan.
Indeed, a 1454 letter that Parma’s Referendario Generale Giovanni Botto addressed to Francesco Sforza, accompanying the Christmas gifts that were proof of the Duchy of Parma’s loyalty to the Duke of Milan, mentions spongata de Berselo (Brescello).
The apothecary was convincing because, in the register of monastery expenses under the rule of Abbess Serafina Bonino from 1480, preserved in the State Archives of Modena, we can read that on that date, the Benedictine monastery gave this cake as a gift to its benefactors.
In the end, even in the list accompanying the gifts that Pietro degli Ardizzoni of Reggio Emilia sent to Duke Borso d’Este of Ferrara in 1473, spongata cake appears (archives of the Masserie Estensi kept at the Soprintendenza for the Historical, Artistic and Anthropological Heritage of Modena).
Even today, spongata cake is popular in Piacenza, Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, and, outside the region, in La Spezia (Liguria) and Massa Carrara (Tuscany). But because many ancient papers mention the village of Brescello, it’s possible to affirm that there exists a strong link between the recipe, the small town, and the city of Reggio Emilia.
Spongata cake: the recipe
The name comes from the word sponga, which in archaic Italian meant a sponge, referring to the spongy appearance of the surface of the cake once it is baked and sprinkled with icing sugar. By the way, icing sugar is a product already known in the Renaissance; at that time, it was produced using cane sugar, and the famous cook Bartolomeo Scappi invented it.
Like many other traditional Italian and Emilia-Romagna Christmas sweets of medieval origins, it has a rich filling of honey, jam, sweet mustard, dried fruit, candied fruit, and spices.
Local and family variations are many. The shape is usually flat and round. The filling is enclosed between two very thin layers. For some, it is a classic shortcrust pastry, and for others, it is an eggless dough. In each case, the dough encloses a filling of dried and candied fruit, honey, jam or sweet mustard, spices, breadcrumbs, and, in some cases, cookies.
The preparation is simple, and the flavor is intensely wonderful.
The most exhausting thing was finding an authentic family recipe. I approached several friends in Reggio Emilia, who had me talk to grandmothers and mothers-in-law. Still, while declaring themselves willing, all of them shared only a few passages of their recipe with me.
This recipe is the precious result of a lengthy investigation.
Some other notes on that recipe
- About the shortcrust pastry: I chose an eggless dough since it is a Christmas cake and winter is a season low in eggs (for that reason I think the original recipe was -probably- eggless). Also, I made this choice to maintain a light color which, I believe, is a characteristic of the cake;
- About the filling:
(a) honey/jam. I made the filling for the first time a year ago using honey, no jam. Good, but the taste was flat and monotonous. After this year’s interviews, I realized some people use fig jam. The flavor completely changed, especially if you let the spongata cake rest a couple of days after baking; - b)breadcrumbs/biscuits. The recipe is from a few centuries ago; people probably used breadcrumbs more than cookies at that time. I opted for a mix of the two ingredients to avoid the cookie one becoming the predominant flavor. The bite is a ride between different flavors;
- (c) the filling must rest. Some people prepare it weeks in advance. I think it’s enough overnight to a couple of days in advance (in the refrigerator);
- the spongata cake should also rest after cooking, one to two days, to give the flavors time to blend and emerge.
I will not make a list of the best traditional Christmas cakes of Emilia-Romagna.
I will only say that this recipe had to be included in my blog, a cookbook dedicated to the flavors of Via Emilia (and my home).
Buona cucina, Monica
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Spongata cake
Equipment
- round baking dish, 22-24 cm diameter
Ingredients
- 50 g of raisins + 1 small ladle of liqueur (rum, marsala, or other sweet wine) and 1 of hot water or hot water only
- 100 g of honey
- 300 g of fig jam or just honey, 400 g for the whole cake
- 100 g of breadcrumbs without salt or flavorings
- 50 g of finely chopped cookies, like Digestive
- 50 g of finely chopped candied citron
- 1/2 organic orange, grated zest
- 100 ml of white wine
- 50 g of almonds, peeled and coarsely chopped
- 50 g of walnut kernels, coarsely chopped
- 50 g of pine nuts
- nutmeg and cinnamon to taste, 1/2 teaspoon of both
- sprinkling of black pepper optional
Shortcrust pastry
- 100 g of butter
- 250 g of all purpose or 00 flour
- 100 g of caster sugar
- 50 ml of white wine
Also
- powdered sugar to decorate
Instructions
Filling
- Place raisins in a bowl and cover with hot water and liquor for 10 minutes. Drain and set aside.
- In a small saucepan, bring honey and jam to a gentle boil; add wine, lower heat, stir for a minute, turn off, and pour into a bowl.
- Add to the honey breadcrumbs and chopped cookies and stir. Then add in ingredients, stir again, let cool, cover with plastic film and refrigerate overnight or for a couple of days.
Shortcrust pastry
- Melt butter in a small saucepan and let cool.
- In a bowl, mix flour and sugar. Add wine and butter and knead until soft and well blended.
- Wrap in plastic wrap and let rest in the refrigerator for one hour.
Assembling spongata cake
- Preheat the oven to 180C (356F) degrees.
- Roll out ¾ of the dough to a height of 3 mm; it should be very thin. Keep the rest aside to make the cake topping. Rolling out the dough between two sheets of baking paper. it will prevent from sticking and make it easier to handle.
- Line the cake pan with parchment paper, arrange the base so that it also adheres to the edges of the mold, and pour in the filling, evening it out with a metal spoon.
- Roll out the dough you set aside, super thin, cover the surface of the cake, and seal the edges by stapling them with your fingers.
- If the dough seems a little soft, place it in the refrigerator or freezer for 10 minutes. Bake the cake in the oven for about 30 minutes or until the edges are lightly browned.
- Let the cake cool completely before dusting with powdered sugar.
Tips
- To enjoy spongata at its best, let the cake rest outside the refrigerator but in a cold room for at least a day or two after baking.
- Store out of the refrigerator for several days.
