Bustrengo

Medium·30 min active + 1 hour resting

San Marino's dense Christmas cake — cornmeal, flour, and stale breadcrumbs bound with eggs, milk, and honey, studded with apple, raisins, and citrus zest, baked into a moist, rustic, fruit-heavy cake.

Egg

Bustrengo is the traditional Sammarinese Christmas cake, a thrifty rustic bake binding cornmeal and stale bread with fruit, honey and eggs. Dense and dark, it turns the larder's leftovers into a festive sweet.

Cut a slice of bustrengo and it is dense, dark, and moist, packed with apple, raisins, and citrus, the cornmeal giving a gentle grainy bite. Bite: rustic and honey-sweet, the fruit jammy, the cornmeal nutty, the citrus and cinnamon warming. Less a fluffy cake than a moist fruited pudding-bread — the thrifty, generous Christmas sweet of San Marino.

Soaking stale breadcrumbs in milk softens them into the batter, the original thrifty purpose of the cake (using up old bread). Cornmeal adds structure and a grainy bite; honey and fruit keep it moist and dense rather than airy. A long, moderate bake sets the heavy batter through without drying the fruit.

Variations

With figs and walnuts. With a splash of mistrà (anise liqueur). With cocoa. With dried plums. Made in a thin sheet. With more honey.

On the Palate

Where Bustrengo sits in the Sammarinese flavor cloud

Ingredients

Serves 10

How it's made

8 steps · 30 min active + 1 hour waiting

1
16 min
Warm 500 ml milk and soak 100 g stale breadcrumbs in it 15 min.
Watch out
Let the stale crumbs sit in the warm milk the full 15 minutes until they've drunk it in and gone soft — that's what melts them into the batter instead of leaving lumps.
2
4 min
Stir in 150 g cornmeal and 100 g flour to a thick batter.
3
4 min
Beat in 3 eggs, 120 g honey, 60 g sugar, and 60 ml olive oil.
4
5 min
Fold in 2 grated apples, 80 g raisins, the zest of 1 orange and 1 lemon, and a pinch of cinnamon.
5
3 min
Pour into a greased, lined cake tin and level.
6
2 min
Scatter the top with extra raisins and a few pine nuts.
7
50 min
Bake at 180°C for 50 min until set and deep golden.
Watch out
Bake low and slow until deep golden and set — a skewer into the center comes out clean; this is a dense, damp cake, so don't expect it to rise or spring back.
8
6 min
Cool fully before slicing into the dense, moist cake.