12th Night - Why not start a tradition which involves cake as they do in Venice?

 Although I am lucky enough to have a fair  number of recipe books, I can't help myself but want to see what inspiration other books may hold. When I read that Jane Swayne a local chocolatier gains inspiration for some of her flavour pairings from The Flavour Thesaurus, I ordered the more flavours version by Niki Segnit, and being reminded that the book was due back as someone else had requested it, I decided to have a quick dip into it on 11th Night.

In the Pine nut section Niki describes a cake she and her husband enjoyed in Venice called Pinza which is traditionally eaten on twelfth night, and probably more often too.   Although there is no recipe for Pinza di Pane given there I soon found a version given on Nigella's site.  Sadly the library system does not feature Cinnamon and Spice by Emiko Davies whose recipe it is and who was a guest writer on the site.

Pinza di Pane

There was enough time yesterday evening to make this equivalent to a bread pudding: after all what is not to like about a bread pudding? Apparently there are many versions of this some using polenta or other grains.  As I was making this I was reminded of the Polenta Shortcake I made back in 2020.

Most of my cake tins have loose bottoms, except for a couple of 7 inch sandwich pans.  As I had halved the recipe and substituted many things, it fitted perfectly.

As I had just 120 grams of stale seeded sourdough left in the bin, I selected the other ingredients around this.  For the techniques I followed Emiko Davies, including the baking times, which as it was wet turned out to be just right for the smaller amounts.  To help ease the cake out I base lined the tin with baking parchment.

Starting off with120g Stale Bread soaked in 230ml milk, whilst the 75g of sultanas were soaking in some of my prized Mauritian Vanilla Rhum, I prepared all the other ingredients halving the amounts in the recipe.  Oh no I didn't have an orange so I got out some lovely candied orange peel chopped it fine and added that.  The little dried figs were a beautiful site cut into think slices. Although not given in the recipe I sprinkled a few pine nuts over the top just before they went into the oven.

Today after we have cleared the house of decorations and I have undone the wreath and stowed away the willow base in the shed for another year, what nicer thing will it be to sit down and enjoy a slice of Pinza de Pane and a little glass of Marsala from Sicily, as a fitting end to 12th Night.