Maybe I’ll call you

Sweet Little Love, Dudu dadadà

And your name will be

The name of every city.

Of a watered kitten

That will meow

“Vattene Amore” Sanremo Festival 1990, sung by Minghi & Mietta.

I conclude the Romantic Menu Sanremo Festival with the song that sparked my love affair with the Festival.

It was 1990, I was 10 years old, and every night, for months, after coming home from school, I would insert my VHS into the VCR to watch Minghi and Mietta’s performance over and over again.

That year the Poohs won with “Uomini soli,” and since then I’ve never missed a single edition of the national Festival…

To this piece of music history, I dedicate the Italian-Style Plumcake, in its romantic 90s version for today’s special day… Valentine’s Day!

Why Italian-style?

Originally this cake was called Pflaumenkuchen (plum cake).

Rectangular in shape, made with shortcrust pastry, with pieces of plum, it was born in Germany and later spread to Anglo-Saxon countries.

One theory even suggests that the plumcake was a meat dish cooked in wine, seasoned with plums and spices, and transformed into a dessert in the Victorian era.

The dessert we know by this name is actually called poundcake in England, where the term pound indicates the same unit of measure for each ingredient.

Anglo-Saxons prefer to use the term fruitcake, reserving the term plumcake to indicate, in the United States, plum cakes, and in the United Kingdom, certain regional specialties.

In Italian, it is a leavened cake made of: flour, eggs, sugar, butter, and other ingredients like dried or candied fruit, sometimes with the addition of spices and liqueurs.

Then in 1992 Mulino Bianco launched the yogurt plumcake on the market, and today in Italy, it is commonly referred to as the yogurt recipe when talking about this dessert (and its numerous additions), and it is to Mulino Bianco’s recipe (which you can find here) that I myself refer, in a gluten-free version and lactose-free.