What cake to make for Christmas: an old recipe in an unusual execution

In 2023, Natasha Contardi from Montreal, Canada, found an ancient recipe written by her grandmother in Italian. With great effort, she managed to translate the recipe and learn all the ingredients of the unusual dish.

It turned out that it was a recipe for serpentine, a traditional Christmas dessert typical of the northern regions of Italy. Serpentine also means "big snake". This name of the dessert fully corresponds to the form of its execution. The original translated recipe for this Christmas dessert was published on the Atlasobscura website.

Ingredients:

• 1 ¾ tbsp. almond flour
• 1 ¾ tbsp. sugar
• 2 eggs
• Zest of one lemon or one orange
• Candied fruit, nuts, and coffee beans for garnishing.

Method of preparation:

1. Sift the sugar and almond flour.

2. Grind the lemon or orange zest with the sugar with your hands to form a homogeneous mass.

3. Combine the lemon sugar with the flour.

4. Separate the yolks from the whites. Beat the whites into a stiff foam.

5. Add the resulting foam in parts to the total mass and mix thoroughly to obtain a homogeneous consistency.

6. Form the dough into a snake and place it so that its head is on the outside of the spiral. Put the snake on a baking sheet covered with parchment.

7. The snake can be decorated with candied fruit particles. Coffee beans, and anything else you wish. But do not forget that this is still a snake, so it should have at least eyes and a tongue. You can also make something that looks like scales by cutting the dough with scissors.

8. Brush the snake with egg yolks, being careful not to get on the decorations.

9. Bake the snake at 175 degrees for 30 minutes.