La Miascia Cake from Lake Como

What is she talking about now?
A Miascia cake? What is that?

I'm still not positive, except that it is a peasant cake made with stale bread from Lake Como......google la Miascia cake and a million Italian recipes come up.

It's really a bread pudding.

I loved this peasant cake with dried plums (prunes), figs, raisins and lemon zest. There's not much sugar in it, so it's not too sweet, the perfect breakfast in my house.

The top gets nice and crispy and the kitchen smells wonderful.

It's pretty simple to make, you just have to follow the waiting time directions of 1 hour for the bread to get stringy in the milk mixture.

This recipe is from the lovely book Cooking With Italian Grandmothers by Jessica Theroux.

La Miascia Cake:

2 cups of stale bread cubes (preferably a plain white baguette or Italian bread loaf...no seeds, no crust)
2 cups of whole milk
2 medium ripe pears or apples, peeled and diced
3 tbsp raisins, soaked in warm water
4 dried plums (prunes), thinly sliced
3 dried figs, thinly sliced
1 lemon, zested and juiced
3 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar (plus 1 tbsp sugar for sprinkling the top)
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted
pinch of salt
pinch of nutmeg

Make sure your bread is nice and stale.....you can leave it out on the counter for a day or two if you like.
Trim all crusts and cut into small pieces.

Preheat oven to 350F. Butter and sugar a 9" round cake pan.

Place bread pieces in a large bowl and pour milk over them. Set aside for an hour or more, turing the bread in the milk from time to time and crushing it with your hands. Soak the bread until it has broken down into a homogeneous mass of moist shreds (sounds yummy!).

There should be no loose milk remaining.

Add in the pears/apples, the strained raisins, the figs, prunes and lemon zest and juice. Mix together gently.

Whisk in the eggs and the 1/2 cup of sugar with 3 tbsp of the melted butter and the pinch of salt. Gently fold this into the bread and fruit mixture.

Pour the mixture into prepared cake pan. Dust the surface w/ freshly grated nutmeg and brush with the remaining tablespoon of melted butter.
Sprinkle the top with the remaining tbsp of sugar. You want a nice crusty top.

Bake for 1 hour. The original recipe calls for a higher baking temperature and an extra 15 minutes. My cake was done and brown on top in 1 hour at the 350F temperature. Check the cake, it should be crispy on top, and pulling away from the sides of the pan. You may need a few more minutes.

Let cool in the pan 20 minutes, then invert onto a cooling rack.

Serve warm......this was even better the next day.

Enjoy!