As some of you know, I am also interested in Wicca. Since this is a blog about cooking, I don’t usually get into it too much. However, there is definitely some overlap, so I want to cover recipes provided by other witches. My friend Barlan at Magia Blanca de Latierra shared a great recipe with me. Barlan’s website is in Spanish, but he is multilungual and has been kind enough to translate it for me.
Are you a Wiccan practitioner? Then you may want to give this cake a try! It is perfect for the modern witch. Barlan has lots of other great wiccan recipes, which I look forward to sharing with you as well.
Finally! A Great Dessert for People on a Wiccan Diet!
This is a typical cake from the north of Italy, from the area of Crema, whose recipe is transmitted from generation to generation, from autumn to autumn. Here I propose it to you with another look:
INGREDIENTS
1/2 kg flour
200 g sugar
2 eggs
1/2 glass of oil
1 sachet of candy yeast
1 yeast cube of beer dissolved in 1 glass of lukewarm milk
milk (if necessary soften the dough)
1/2 kg of small black grape (in Italy the “uva fragola” is usually used)
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fragola grape
PREPARATION
Mix all the ingredients in a bowl until a creamy consistency is obtained and leave to stand for an hour and a half. Then pour the dough into a previously buttered mould covered with breadcrumbs. Bake in the oven at 180º for approx. 50 minutes or until the cake is “toasted”.
It won’t take long to make this cake come out great. You will be shocked by how delicious it can be.
Why this recipe is great for any practicing WICCA
The tradition of sweet bread with grapes is typical of autumn and the commemoration of the dead (which in the Northern Hemisphere falls on those dates), but I want to get out a little of this symbolism to face this cake with another approach.
Bertolina is a simple, humble, austere cake that lets you taste its “tender heart” of grapes slowly and that forces us to stop and taste (otherwise we choke).
Therefore, although it is suitable to celebrate Samhain, it also lends itself to a meditation that makes us reflect on what satisfies us in our life, what makes us choke, what we should taste of it, how we live our Dionysian side (the grape) and how we live our telluric side (the flour).
This diet is not only consistent with the diet modern witches follow. It is also delicious! This is hardly surprising, because Italy is known for both producing some of the brightest witches and famous chefs in the world.
Why not give this cake a try? I enjoyed it. If you find a variation of this recipe that comes out even better, then don’t hesitate to contact me to say how it came out. I look forward to hearing how you reverse engineered it!