Since the demise of the English version of La Cucina Italiana, I’ve had to make due with the Italian version via email. A couple of times a week I get an email with recipes and other food information – all in Italian.

If you’ve ever used Google Translate, you know how kludgy it can be. Translating recipes brings it to a whole new level. If you didn’t have a basic understanding of cooking to begin with, you’d probably really be up a creek without a spatula.

But… I know my way around a kitchen and have a scale that I can use to measure out grams instead of cups or ounces. And I’m married to an Italian so certain things just come to me through osmosis.

Which brings us to tonight’s ultime ricette – Maiorchino – which translates to “Majorcan.” Majorca is certainly not Italian, but they do use lots of almonds, so I’m guessing that’s where the name comes from. And while sitting here, I figured I might do a bit of research, and found a similar cake in Majorca called Coca de Cuarto – that just doesn’t translate, right. But it does appear that it’s at least based upon a Majorcan recipe.

All this for a piece of cake!

The La Cucina Italiana picture is what got me to look at the recipe in the first place:

Heck, ya look at that and immediately want to make it! So I did…

It was really easy – made a huge cake – and half of it went into the freezer because I know we’ll never be able to eat it all before it goes stale.

Here’s the Google-Translated recipe straight from the Google-Translated web page:

Ricetta Maiorchino

• 700 g flour
• 500g caster sugar
• chopped almonds 150 gr
• 9 eggs –
• powdered sugar –
• butter –
• salt –

For the Majorcan recipe, mix the flour and granulated sugar with the eggs, the chopped almonds and a pinch of salt. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper and imburratela (butter it).