We are having a beautiful sunny week, maybe even slightly too warm for this time of year. The trees started blossoming -literally- overnight and while we’re living surrounded by several new constructions, there’s still a piece of land around our building that is green and overgrown with various trees – this land once used to be a part of gardens (illegally) owned by Ljubljana citizens. Slovenes enjoy growing their own vegetables – even if only on a square meter of land. Our present mayor decided to put an end to this “city-cultivation” thing and expelled majority of eager gardeners from “their” little lands which are now turning into more and more new apartment blocks. The green “oasis” surrounding our building is most probably condemned to a cement destiny as well – we only hope this day is far away still.

One of the trees growing around our building: cherry tree

More evidence of former gardens: grape hyacinth can be found in every Slovene garden at this time of year

There are even strawberry plants growing in the grass

Talking about Easter food; besides baking potica, Slovenes also dye dozens of eggs (using brown onion leaves as a dye is a common practice in many a Slovene family) which will then be served on the Sunday morning together with sliced, dried pork meat, grated horseradish and freshly baked bread.

Honestly, I didn’t feel like making potica again, what I really wanted was to make some other Easter cake, so I chose a recipe from an old German bakery book called Backvergnuegen wie noch nie (published by Graefe and Unzer, 1980). The Slovene version of this book was published in 1986.  I’m not sure why my mum even bought it because she never baked anything from it.  I remember flipping through pages as a child, salivating with the photos and dreaming of being able to bake those treats once. What I didn’t know back then was the fact that the recipe measures of this book were not exactly precise (in Slovene translation only? I keep on wondering. I guess I should get myself the original and compare.) Whenever I wanted to bake something from this book, I ended up improvising – the instructions were rather stingy and therefore quite useless for a cook apprentice like myself.

And yet this book tempted me again in baking a cake which translates roughly from Slovene as “Easter cake from Campania”. Campania is a region in southern Italy with Napoli as its capital. I searched on the Internet  and found out this cake is called “pastiera” in Italian, and not only that – the characteristic ingredient of pastiera is (cooked) wheat, while my recipe uses (cooked) rice. I went for the rice since I couldn’t locate cooked wheat (apparently sold in cans). Pastiera is definitely a rich, heavy cake, be it made with rice or wheat.

EASTER CAKE FROM CAMPANIA (my version of the recipe based on the upper mentioned book)

For the pâte brisée (shortcrust pastry):
300g all-purpose flour (I used white emmer flour)
200g cold butter
100g sugar
a pinch of salt
1 egg yolk
1-2 Tbsp cold water

For the filling:
340g short grain rice
850ml (whole) milk
1 Tbsp butter
120g sugar
grated peel of one orange and one lemon (non-treated)
250g fresh ricotta, drained
4 eggs
1tsp ground cinnamon
1Tbsp confectioner’s sugar + 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon for sprinkling

1. Prepare the shortcrust pastry by mixing the flour with cold butter, sugar, salt, egg yolk and water. Forming a ball, wrap it in plastic film and let it rest in the fridge for 2 hours.
2. Cook the rice: boil the milk together with sugar, 1 Tbsp butter, grated lemon and orange peel and add the rice, previously washed and drained. Reduce the heat to minimum and let the rice absorb the milk for 15 minutes, then remove from the stove.
3. Beat the eggs together with ricotta, add ground cinnamon, then combine with the milk rice.
4. Preheat the oven at 180 – 200ºC (depending on your oven). Roll out 2/3 of the pastry dough and put it in a spring-form cake pan (26cm), buttered and/or lined with parchment paper. Prick the pastry with a fork. I blind baked it for 10 minutes, like I always do with this type of pastry, however the recipe doesn’t suggest to do so.
5. Now pour the rice & ricotta mixture into the pan, roll out the rest of the pastry dough and cut it into strips. Arrange them crisscrossed on the surface of the cake and bake for about an hour (again, it depends on your oven). I had to cover the cake with aluminum foil after 30 minutes of baking.
6. Let the cake cool in the pan completely. Once cooled, dust it with the mix of confectioner’s sugar and ground cinnamon, slice and serve at room temperature.

"Pastiera" with rice

The cake was dense but tasted really good. Would I make it again? For sure. I’d also like to try it with cooked wheat – that is,  if I can ever get my hands on it! So, if you like rice and ricotta, you should bookmark this recipe.

One heavy slice of a cake

Related posts:

1. Orange and lemon ricotta cake
2. Happy Easter!
3. Layered goodness
4. Jaffa cake
5. Tarta de Santiago (St. James’ Cake)