Ciambellone Ring Cake – Old Days Italian Staple

Ciambellone Ring Cake – Old Days Italian Staple | You can also add your personal twist by adding raisins, chocolate chips, nuts or everything you like, I’ve made it a couple of times with matcha green tea, it was awesome. I recommend you try it with chocolate chips and pecan or with a mix of grounded spices such as ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves…it will always be perfect.

I remember when I was a little girl my mom used to bake this cake and many variations of it, quite twice a week to make me and my sister have a healthy snack in the afternoon. Nowadays I would also say that it’s not only healthy for your children but it also really cheap, you will need just 5 simple ingredients.

Ingredients

• three eggs
• 200gr sugar (1 and ½ cups)
• ½ glass of vegetable oil (1/2 cup)
• 5gr of butter to grease the pan
• one glass of milk (1cup)
• 15gr baking powder, that should be 2 and a half teaspoons
• orange or lemon zest, grated
• 300gr (2 and ½ cups) all purpose flour (or 270gr - 2cups whole wheat)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven at 180/200°C (350/390°F). Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix it with a whisk, or put them into the food processor and turn it on. Mix until evenly combined.
2. Grease your baking pan with butter and then add some flour and move the pan to even distribute the flour on the surface. Add the batter and cook for 40 minutes. You can check if it's ready by piercing the cake with a skewer. If it comes out clean, the cake is ready.
3. IMPORTANT! do not open the oven in the first 25 minutes or the cake will collapse

Basically every person I know used to have, as a child, what we call “ciambellone” (big doughnut). I don’t think in the 70s and 80s in Italy there were women who did not know how to bake this delicious cake (obviously every household had its own recipe..).