SPUMONI CAKE: History and Recipes for National Spumoni Day!

Today is National Spumoni Day! Spumoni, not to be confused with zamboni, is a multicolored Italian dessert. When I was growing up, it was usually a flavorless ice cream served in Italian restaurants at the end of a meal. It wasn't until I visited Italian friends that I had really good Spumoni.

By definition, Spumoni is a special Italian dessert made of layers of ice cream, whipped cream, candied fruit, and nuts. Each layer contains different flavors and ingredients. In traditional dessert kitchens, spumoni is often made of three layers of flavor: chocolate, pistachio, and cherry. Each layer of Spumoni ice cream may include more than flavored ice cream. The chocolate layer, for example, may include chocolate shavings or chunks. Sometimes the chocolate layer has crushed hazelnuts inside. Not only does the hazelnut add a lovely flavor to the chocolate, but it also compliments the pistachio layer. The pistachio layer, of course, almost always includes crushed pistachio nuts. Finally, the fruit layer of spumoni is usually made with candied fruit. The cherry layer is the most traditional fruit component to the dessert.

 

Edy's and Dreyer's make Spumoni ice-cream available all year round. Yum!

You can make your own spumoni ice cream today, but if you can't find any and you don't want to make your own, you can always make Spumoni Cake. 

The trick to making beautiful Spumoni Cake is to have layers! This can be done by baking different layers or just layering a bundt cake in the bundt pan (no swirling).

Because this is such a special holiday, I'm posting an easy Spumoni Cake recipe and linking several others for those of you who are more adventurous or have more time!

Easy Spumoni Bundt Cake
Recipe on the Duncan Hines Baker's Club Forum: Source: Our Favorite Recipes St. John Neumann Catholic Church-recipe: Emile Bernard

You can add chopped up maraschino cherries to the Red Layer, chocolate chips, or grated chocolate to the chocolate layer, and crushed or chopped pistachios to the green layer. Also, you can put pistachio pudding in the green layer for flavor!

Ingredients
1 (18.25 oz.) pkg. white or yellow cake mix
4 large eggs
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 (8 oz.) container sour cream
1 (4 serving size) pkg. instant vanilla pudding mix
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate (melted)
green coloring drops
marachino cherries
red food coloring
1/2 cup chopped nuts

Directions
Pre-heat Coven to 350. Grease bundt pan.
Combine cake mix, eggs, oil, sour cream, and pudding mix; beat until well blended.
Divide batter into 3 bowls.
To bowl #1, add and mix in 1/2 cup chopped nuts, 5-6 drops green food coloring, 1/2 tsp. almond extract.
To bowl #2, add and mix in 1 (4 oz.) jar cut up and well drained maraschino cherries, 5-6 drops red food coloring.
To bowl #3, add and mix in 2 (1 oz. each) squares melted unsweetened chocolate.
Pour green batter into pan first, then the red (pink) batter, and over this the chocolate batter. Be sure NOT to swirl or mix batters.
Bake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes until cake tests done. Cool in pan for 30 minutes; remove from pan and cool completely.

Here are three more recipes for very different Spumoni Cakes:

Margie Slivnske (San Jose Easy Meals Examiner)  Easy, and my personal favorite.

Bette Ubaldini's Spumoni Cake  This is another easy recipe, and it's delicious.

Celebration Generation  A little more complicated, but worth it.

And here's a recipe for Spumoni Cake from 1960.