Books and cakes - 59

    Food to go with The Enchanted April, Elizabeth von Arnim's charming 1922 novel which the Cornflower Book Group have been reading and are talking about here - well, there's Mellersh's apricot tart, the nuts over which Mrs. Fisher is inclined to sit long at the dinner table, and there's always pasta:

    "Francesca from the sideboard watched Mrs. Fisher's way with maccaroni gloomily, and her gloom deepened when she saw her at last take her knife to it and chop it small.

    Mrs. Fisher really did not know how else to get hold of the stuff .... Years of practice, she reflected, chopping it up, years of actual living in Italy, would be necessary to learn the exact trick. Browning managed maccaroni wonderfully. She remembered watching him one day when he came to lunch with her father, and a dish of it had been ordered as a compliment to his connection with Italy. Fascinating, the way it went in. No chasing round the plate, no slidings off the fork, no subsequent protrusions of loose ends - just one dig, one whisk, one thrust, one gulp, and lo, yet another poet had been nourished."

    The book's setting has inspired the choice of baked goods this month, as San Salvatore, the castle in which the ladies spend their enchanted April, is in fact Castello Brown in Portofino in the Italian province of Genoa, the castle being a fort which was bought in 1867 by Montague Yeats Brown (then English consul in Genoa) who turned it into a delightful villa, and so I've made a Genoese sponge.

    The recipe I used comes from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Every Day and is also to be found here, but instead of fruit, I've filled it with ricotta beaten with caster sugar and lemon zest. I hope Lotty and her friends would approve.

Comments

[ctussaud]

If that geranium leaf is a scented one, you could lay it on the base of the tin before pouring in the mixture for an elegantly perfumed cake.

[Erika]

My small scented geraniums ( a lot of dead stems to cut back) have ALL made it through the Winter--15 of them shoved into various reasonably well-lit corners of the house. They went back onto the open porch last week and are now in three big shallow bowls, with a view to ease next cold season.

I am going to bake lemon balm muffins this morning--this particular herb runs riot in a small bed around an anonymous pink rose outside the back door.

I re-read "Enchanted April" last year so it is too soon for a re-visit. But I am considering what to re-read next.

[Barbara]

Pretty decoration! I've heard of putting a geranium leaf in the tin but never tried it.

[Mr Cornflower]

It strikes me that Genoese sponge soaked in Marsala would make an ideal trifle base. Come to think of it, don't we have some Marsala kicking about somewhere...?

[Cornflower]

I shall try that next time. Thank you, Curzon.

[Cornflower]

Yes, my lemon balm has become very invasive, too.

[Cornflower]

I don't think I'd heard of it before, but the scent as the cake bakes must be lovely.

[Cornflower]

The cake is almost all gone though.