A very "foolish" cake from Tuscany

The “torta co bischeri” is a typical cake from a small village in the Pisa’s region called Pontasserchio (roughly translatable as “Serchio Bridge”).

This cake is very special because is quite impossibile to find it out of this small area.

The word “bischero” means “foolish/silly”. The Bischeri’s family was the only family in Florence that refused to sell its own palace in the area where the Duomo of Florence had to be built. At the end, all the Bischeri properties were dispossessed and they didn’t get any money for their assets.

This recipe requires almost 2 hour to be done.

First of all make the shortcrust. There are a lot of different recipes, but the following one is my favourite because is not too fat.

250 gr of flour
1 egg
100 gr of butter
100 gr of sugar
baking powder
a pinch of salt

Knead together all the ingredients to get a smooth dough. Then put it in the fridge for at least 1 hour.



Ingredients for the filling:

100 gr of rice
½ lt of milk
50 gr of sugar
150 gr of dark chocolate
50 gr of cocoa powder
50 gr of pine nuts
2 eggs
cinnamon
raisins
candied fruit
liqueur of your choice (in our case, we’ll use whisky).

Soak the raisins in liqueur.


Boil the milk with cinnamon powder. As soon the milk starts boiling add the rice and cook it for 25/30 min.


Strain the rice and add chocolate, cocoa powder and sugar.



Wait until the mixture is cold an then add the eggs, pine nuts, candied fruit and raisins with whisky.



Coat a backing tray with the shortcrust leaving enough pastry to fold the border and fill it with the rice mix.


Decorate the cake with pastry lattice.
Fold the pastry on the border and pinch it as shown below.

Cook it for 40 minutes at 180 C.

It's just delicious.