Recipe below: Amaretto Cake for Christmas Morning
Christmas Eve was always a big deal when I was a kid. Shelling shrimp, steaming clams, looking for Scotch tape, hunting down oversized platters, chipping wax off candlesticks, sweeping up all the bulbs the cats destroyed, waiting for relatives and orphans to arrive. Sammy Davis, Jerry Vale, Ronnie Spector on the turntable. Ring a ding party. A glamorous evening. Christmas day was, in comparison, a bit of a drag. I can hardly even remember our meal that day. I think it wasn’t much of anything. We were cooked out, the place still smelling of baccala and cigarettes. I don’t know if I’m just getting stupid in my old age, but I really can’t recall if there was a ham or if we sent out for Chinese food. That seems unlikely for an Italian family, but my memory is weird here. In the morning there was panettone with butter, and espresso, that I know for a fact. Aside from that, I’ll have to ask my sister.
The big event for me now is still Christmas Eve. Christmas day I usually look for a place that’s open and go have an early dinner out, hamburgers or whatever. But Christmas morning is reserved for panettone. I love the panettone ritual very much. This year I decided to augment it with something of my own, something with a similar Christmasy scent. I zeroed in on Amaretto, a sticky little drink that always came out at the end at the Christmas Eve dinners of my childhood, along with Galliano and Strega, all kind of crazy tasting. An unusual culture created such peculiar beverages.
As a starting point I used the basic olive oil yogurt cake recipe I’ve been making for years. Very vanilla, lightly sweet. Delicious. I almonded it up with chopped almonds replacing some of the flour and a shot of Amaretto itself.
The aroma of this cake, when baking, and the taste of it, with the mingling of Amaretto and vanilla, reminds me of angel food, specifically the commercial angel food I adored as a kid. It’s good with espresso, absolutely, but I’m thinking it might even be better with a glass of Christmas morning prosecco. That seems about perfect.
Merry Christmas to all my Italian food–loving friends.
Amaretto Cake for Christmas Morning
1¾ cups regular flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
A big pinch of salt
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 large eggs
1 cup whole milk yogurt
1 cup sugar
½ cup fruity olive oil
2 tablespoons Amaretto
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
⅛ teaspoon almond extract
½ cup blanched almonds, preferably Sicilian, lightly toasted and then cut into a small chop
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly oil a 9-inch loaf pan.
Put the flour in a bowl. Add the baking powder, salt, and nutmeg, and give everything a good mix.
In another bowl, break the eggs and add the yogurt and sugar, mixing well.
In a small bowl, combine the Amaretto, the vanilla, and the olive oil, and give it a stir.
Add the flour mix to the egg mix, and stir everything together. Pour in the olive oil mix and the almonds, and stir.
Pour the resulting batter into the loaf pan. Bake until puffed and browned and firm to the touch, about 45 to 50 minutes. Let sit for at least an hour before slicing.