Tuscan Berlingozzo: a Carnival ciambellone scented with orange juice and zest
Oranges, rain, and the small rituals that make winter lighter
It has been raining for what seems like a decade, and my usual country walk is now scattered with puddles so large they seem to move with tides influenced by the moon.
If it isn’t pouring, it is drizzling, yet the countryside is still far from turning lush and green. Sepia, brown, and grey are the colours I wake up to in the morning, and the shades I glimpse through ajar shutters throughout the day. Nights are pitch-black, as the sky is constantly covered by a heavy blanket of clouds.
I’m under the weather. I’m sipping hot chamomile tea, trying to limit the time I spend online, weighed down by the news. I look for glimmers of hope and good cheer to push back against the gloomy weather and the dreadful situation the world is facing right now.
In the privileged comfort of my kitchen, I zest an orange.
An act so simple and homely, yet exhilarating and capable of dramatically lifting your mood, the citrussy essential oils tingling at your nose and staining your fingers a vivid shade of orange.
The zesty aroma makes me reach for a bowl and a whisk. I want to bake a cake, a seasonal one, and Carnival is just around the corner.
I’m looking for a domestic cake, something sober and practical, meant to be shared, sliced, and eaten over several days.
As Carnival approaches, Tuscan kitchens fill with desserts in which orange is a seasonal signature. Mine is no exception.
Instead of Carnival parades and costumes, I start thinking about cenci and frittelle—the most universally known sweet treats, and the most common in the countryside—but also schiacciata alla fiorentina and berlingozzo, cakes that return year after year, marking the season with their unmistakable aromas.
These are highly seasonal cakes, both in their ingredients and in their intent: something you make right now, rather than all year round, and that is what makes them a little more special.
I chose to bake a Carnival ciambellone, known as berlingozzo in Tuscany.
While I was whisking the ingredients, I felt slightly tipsy from the orange zest, generously grated into the batter, and the Vin Santo.
Once removed from its mould, I doused the cake, still hot, with a syrupy orange juice, then sprinkled it with rainbow sprinkles, perfectly attuned to Carnival.
Now the Carnival berlingozzo—shimmering with orange syrup and colourful with a generous scattering of sprinkles—sits on the kitchen counter, ready to be sliced throughout the day. Next to it is a vase holding a bunch of daffodils picked from the garden, another small glimmer that makes me believe sunnier days are not so far away.
Read also: Felicity Cloake’s The Only Fruit. Stop taking oranges for granted.
Tuscan Carnival Sweet Treats
Carnival was the last chance to indulge in the pleasures of food and life before Lent. Semel in anno licet insanire, the Latins used to say: once a year, it is permitted to lose one’s head, a brief moment when religious and social conventions could be set aside.
If you want to bring a ray of sunshine to a gloomy day and bake a seasonal cake infused with the aroma of oranges, here you will find the recipes for Tuscan Carnival sweet treats.
Cenci
During Carnival time, bakeries and pastry shops fill up their counters with heaps of crisp, feather-light cenci, the Tuscan fried dough scraps gently flavoured with orange zest and vinsanto, our sweet dessert wine.
You might know them by different Italian names: lattughe, crostoli, galani, frappe, chiacchiere, bugie, intrigoni… they change the name from town to town, but what they have in common is the fact that they are fried (originally in pork fat, hence they were consumed for Carnival before the Lent fasting) and lavishly covered in sugar. How not to love them?
Check my recipe here.
Watch the cook along replay on how to make cenci here.
Frittelle
They vary enormously depending on where they are made. In Siena, for instance, you’ll find Sienese rice fritters. The rice is cooked well in advance—days ahead—and left to mature, almost to ferment, until it turns creamy and soft. There is no sugar in the mixture, nor any raisins. The fritters are fried in large cauldrons in a small hut in Piazza del Campo, then generously dusted with sugar while still piping hot. Bite into one and you’ll find a crisp, sugary shell giving way to a melt-in-the-mouth, creamy centre, delicately scented with orange.
They are, without a doubt, my favourite rice fritters, not least because they are tied to so many memories of my university years.
Tommaso, on the other hand, has a soft spot for the Florentine rice fritters, and every year we end up playfully arguing over which are best: those from Siena or those from Florence?
Recently, we reached a compromise. We buy the Sienese fritters—because we love holding the hot, grease-stained paper in Piazza del Campo, pulling out one fritter after another, licking sugary fingers, and marvelling at the medieval scenery—but at home, I make the Florentine ones.
The funny thing is that these are also the fritters my grandmother had been making for as long as I can remember: dense and generous, with rice cooked in milk, plump raisins, and a final coating of sugar. They are also the fritters we traditionally make to celebrate Father’s Day, on the 19th of March, so if you’re not quite ready to make them now, save the recipe and get ready to fry in a couple of weeks.
Check my recipe here.
Watch the cook along replay on how to make frittelle here.
Schiacciata alla Fiorentina
Despite its name, which recalls the savoury flatbreads so typical of Florentine bakeries, schiacciata alla fiorentina is in fact a sweet cake made with sourdough starter of fresh yeast, delicately scented with orange and vanilla. During Carnival it appears in every bakery, pastry shop, and bar across Florence.
In its earliest form, schiacciata was little more than bread dough enriched with lard. Carnival, after all, coincided with the traditional time of pig slaughter, when lard was plentiful and ready to be used. Over time, the recipe grew more elaborate with the addition of sugar, vanilla, and oranges—used generously, both zest and juice—giving the cake its unmistakable aroma.
Another important element of schiacciata alla fiorentina is its traditionally rectangular shape. It is said that the nuns of Santa Verdiana in Florence were the ones who made the schiacciata popular, baking it in the same rectangular trays they also used to serve meals to detainees.
Traditionally dusted with icing sugar and marked with the Florentine lily, schiacciata alla fiorentina is now increasingly served split and filled with whipped cream or pastry cream.
There is even an annual competition to crown the best Florentine schiacciata, a title almost universally attributed to Pasticceria Giorgio or Pasticceria Marisa. Tommaso and I once took part in the competition as judges: we tasted nearly twenty schiacciate from the city’s best pastry shops and bakeries, all strictly unfilled, so we could truly appreciate the softness of the crumb, the aromas, and the mouthfeel. At the end, I was dizzy from the sugar and the heady aromas, but it remains one of the very best days I can remember.
RECIPE - Berlingozzo, the Tuscan Carnival ciambellone
Berlingozzo, though one of Tuscany’s lesser-known Carnival treats, is a deeply aromatic ciambellone, a ring cake that has been associated with this festive season since the 15th century. Its long history is even echoed in a poem by none other than Lorenzo de’ Medici:
“Donne, noi siam giovani fornai,
de l’arte nostra buon’ maestri assai:
Noi facciam berlingozzi, e zuccherini”.
The name berlingozzo comes from berlingaccio, the Tuscan name for Fat Thursday, once linked to an ancient Carnival mask. This ciambellone originates in Lamporecchio, a small town also famed for its brigidini: thin, crisp wafers delicately speckled with aniseed, a constant presence at country fairs throughout the year.
That same aniseed aroma returns in berlingozzo itself, paired with vinsanto, the sweet dessert wine traditionally found in every Tuscan cupboard, and with orange zest and juice. Oranges, a seasonal ingredient often used to flavour Carnival treats, were also a fruit deeply loved by the Medici family.
