Parrozzo of Abruzzo

Parrozzo is a traditional christmas pudding of Abruzzo, my region in central Italy. As a conservative coeliac, this Christmas, I couldn't miss the chance to recreate one of my favourite gluten free cakes. Also because there is an amazing story behind this simple and tasty recipe!

The first Parrozzo is dated 1920 and it was made in Pescara, by a pastry chef called Luigi D'Amico. He wanted to create a dessert similar to rough bread (pane rozzo, hence why the name), a typical bread made by local farmers using corn flour. Parrozzo recipe was so delicious to even inspire the famous writer Gabriele D'Annunzio to write a sonnet about it: La Canzone del Parrozzo. Nowadays it represents the perfect Christmas gluten free dessert and I want to share with you my recipe!

Here a time-lapse of the making:

Ingredients:

- 75 grams of minced almonds

- 3 eggs

- 120 grams of sugar

- 65 grams of corn flour

- 1 small lemon

- salt

- baking spray or oil or butter

The making:

Separate the egg yolks from the whites. Firstly, whisk the egg whites until stiff (with a pinch of salt). Then, mix the egg yolks with the sugar in a separate bowl.

Mix the corn flour with the minced almonds and then add the mix, slowly, to the egg yolks & sugar. It is important to mix and not to stir the batter at this stage. The gluten free flour and almonds need to make love with the more liquid ingredients, till the point you will create a homogenous batter.

Finally, add first the sauce of half a lemon and then the whipped egg whites to the batter: the final result should be not too fluid.

Use the traditional rounded cake stamp to pour the batter inside, but first, oil it or spray it with baking spray to avoid the batter sticking to the stamp when cooking.

Put in the oven at a temperature of 140 degrees and set a time for 50 minutes.

Check on the Parrozzo in the oven with a wooden stick: if you pierce the cake in the oven with it, you will find out whether it still needs to cook or not, based on how wet the stick becomes.

After taking the Parrozzo out of the oven the final step is to decorate it with chocolate. The traditional recipe uses just dark chocolate but, if you want to be creative, this is the moment to add decorations to your gluten free Parrozzo.

The result should be something like this:

Merry Christmas from The Gluten Freelancer!