A delightful summer cake

Fruit cakes (literal translation is fruit cake) are typical Italian sweet delights mainly baked in summer when the variety of fresh fruits is great. If you type into your Browser “Crostata alla Frutta”, you will find many different type of them. With this recipe you can let your creativity and taste flow. The process may take some time, but trust me, it will be worth it.

Ingredients for the dough:

• 3 teaspoon of baking powder
• 300 gr of flour
• 170 gr of sugar
• 100 gr of butter (melted)
• 3 eggs (2 yolks, 1 entire)

Ingredients for the cream (“Crema Pasticcera”):

• 130 gr sugar
• 2 eggs
• 4 tablespoon flour
• 2 glass of milk
• Zest of 2 lemons
• Juice of 1 lemon

Toppings:

• 100 gr Blueberries
• 100 gr Raspberries
• 2 Peaches
• 1 Banana

Process:

For this recipe you need to prepare the dough which will form the base of the cake and then the cream to put on top.

Dough:

1. Start by melting the butter in the microwave for 30 seconds. In the meantime, put the flour in a bowl and mix it with the sugar and the baking powder using a fork or a whisk.
2. When the butter is ready, add it to the flour bowl. Now add the 2 yolks and one entire egg and starting kneading the dough with your hands. Usually, I start with a fork and then I continue with my hands. Mix everything together until the dough reaches a non-sticky consistency.
3. Once the dough it ready, leave it in the bowl, cover it with a kitchen towel and let it rest for half an hour in the fridge.
4. After 30 min, take the dough out from the fridge and place it in a baking tray. try to spread it as evenly as you can.
5. Bake the cake base in the oven at 180° for 20/25 min. You can use either the static or ventilated oven setting.
   

Cream:
While the cake is baking in the oven, you can prepare the cream.

1. First, take a pot which can contain around 4/5 litres of water and whisk the ingredients together before putting it on the stove. Now you can start whisking the eggs with the sugar. Continue whisking until the mixture reaches a uniform and creamy consistency (the sugar should not be visible anymore).
2. You proceed by adding the flour, lemon zest and juice, and milk. Use a sieve while adding the flour to the mixture so that no lumps will form.
3. Now you can put the pot on the stove at medium heat. You should stir it all the time so that no mixture will remain stuck at the bottom of the pot. Let it cook on the stove until the cream has thickened. It should take around 15/20 min. In case the mixture does not thicken, then add some flour.
4. Once the cream has thickened, let it cool down for 10/15 minutes.

Assemble the cake

1. While the cream is cooling down, you can start preparing the fruits. start by washing the blueberries and peaches. Peel the banana and cut it into slices.
2. After the dough is backed and the cream has cooled down, you can put the cream on the base. With the help of a spatula, spread the cream evenly on the base.
3. At this point you can let your imagination run free and start arranging the fruits on the cream. Once you arranged the fruits, let the cake cool down in the fridge, the longer the better. Enjoy!

Variants:

• As a topping you can put every kind of fruit that you like. As you can see in the pictures, berries are my passion but you can also leave them completely out. As you can see from the different pictures, I used different types of fruits depending on what is available or in season.

Tips:

• When baking the base of the cake you can put a layer of baking paper on top of the dough and put dry beans on it. This will prevent the dough from drying out too much and form bubbles while baking.

Gallery

• Image 1 Fruit cake with bananas, blueberries and apricots

• Image 2 16 years old birthday cake with raspberries, bananas, blueberries and peaches

• Image 2 Birthday cake with black current, red current, white current and peaches