Cake!

Granny has been making the most incredible cakes and biscuits (or biscweets as they pronounce it in Anglo-Italian). Most of which include fig-orange- almond or fig and carubo. I have no idea what carubo is in English. It looks like taramind, and has a sweet/sour taste when you chew the pod, which is like a long black broadbean. The seeds, hard round pebbles, were apparantly used across the Meditearrean as a common measurement for diamonds, which is where we get the word Carat (Carato in Italian, Quirat in Arabic, kerátiōn in Greek). I learnt this from a walk I did with a group.

We stopped every couple of hundred yards to eat something off a tree or pick something off the ground. Oranges, Mandarins, Almonds, Carubo, Persimmon, Pomegranates....you get the picture. Under the carubo tree a special type of mediterrean mushroom grows, imaginitively called 'il fungo del Carubo'.

Anyway, going back on the subject of Granny's cake, she makes a sugar dusted ring filled with marmelata delle arance (orange jam) and broken pieces of dark chocolate. Butter is definately NOT sicilian, she uses olive oil, flour and a little sugar for batter. It is quite the best cake I have ever tasted, and I have tasted Mary's from Bletchington, Oxon (hitherto the best cakes known to me personally). I will post a picture soon.