You can find buckwheat cake in a thousand versions. I always like it, so here is my version! It is a soft cake with a creamy and tasty jam filling. You can choose to use a homemade jam or buy a special jam.

Buckwheat cake is a South Tyrolean cake that is also suitable for coeliacs. Here’s my version on cast iron.

If you have a coeliac in the house, make sure that the red crossed-out ear of wheat appears on the flour packets!

Ingredients

• 150 g soft butter
• 150 g sugar
• 150 g buckwheat flour
• 150 g almond or hazelnut flour
• 4 eggs
• A sachet of vanillin
• 10 g baking powder
• 300 g cranberry compote
• Icing sugar for dusting the cake
• Whipped cream

Preparation methodology

Prepare your Ghisanativa: cut two strips of baking paper, butter the pan with soft butter (1), and put the strips in, crisscrossing them and making them overlap (2). I always use this technique even when I don’t use the cast iron pan!

Butter the paper strips again and flour them. This will make it easier to remove the cake from the mould by lifting it off the strips.

Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites (3) and beat the whites until stiff (4)

In a bowl with an electric whisk, work the soft butter with the sugar until the mixture is fluffy and white.

Add the egg yolks a little at a time (5) incorporating them well into the butter.

Mix the buckwheat flour with the baking powder, the vanilla sachet, and the almond flour and start to incorporate into the butter a little at a time (6), alternating with the egg whites until they are stiff: the mixture will be quite compact.

Pour everything into your Ghisanativa pan (7) and bake in a preheated oven at 170 C for 35/40 minutes. Do the toothpick test to see if the cake is ready: pierce the cake with a wooden skewer diagonally; if the skewer comes out dry then it is time to remove the cake from the oven, otherwise, leave it for a few more minutes.

Once out of the oven wait about 5 minutes and then lift the cake out of the pan (8) holding the paper strips (this is also a good system for plum cakes, in this case only one strip is needed, placed along the length of the mould) and let the cake cool on a wire rack (9).

Once cold, cut it in half: in my case, I made three disks (10) because I used a pan with a narrow diameter.

Fill it with the cranberry compote. Sprinkle it with icing sugar and serve it with a big spoonful of “semi-whipped” cream – the cream should not be completely whipped, like ice cream, but it should remain shiny and form a sort of beak when you lift the whisk.

Michela Oppo

“Cooking teacher, Venetian by adoption, born and lived until the age of 18 in the city of La Spezia from a Sardinian father and a Ligurian mother, from La Spezia to be precise, with a little Piedmontese blood. I left pieces of my heart in Shanghai, Buenos Aires and London. There are many reasons why I cook, to feed and to nourish myself of course, but I think I cook above all for love, for love of my loved ones and why not, to be loved in turn. I love the tango, the sea, books that make you dream, ceramics, fans, languages and… cooking and baking of course!”

This recipe is prepared on