Spamoni Ice Cream

Bette Ubaldini's Spumoni Cake

Spumoni, the multicolored Italian ice cream, is a pretty well-known dessert.

Spumoni Cake, though? Maybe not so much.

Well, it exists, and Bette Ubaldini has a very good recipe for it.

The Clarks Summit resident's version of Spumoni Cake was the winning entry in this week's Local Flavor: Recipes We Love contest. She received a $75 gift certificate from Rossi's ShurSave Market in Old Forge.

Joyce Nyberg of Lakewood received the runner-up prize for her Baked Corn recipe, which can be found online at www.thetimes-tribune.com/localflavor.

A longtime specialist in Italian cookery, Mrs. Ubaldini got her recipe for Spumoni Cake from a friend about a decade ago. Since then, it's become an annual Christmas Day tradition for her family.

"The colors make it very Christmasy," said Mrs. Ubaldini, the mother of two, grandmother of five and great-grandmother of three.

In its original ice cream form, Spumoni typically combines flavors like chocolate and pistachio with cherries and nuts, resulting in a very pretty-looking dessert.

Same concept

Spumoni as cake follows a similar formula.

Mrs. Ubaldini starts the recipe by making a batter out of sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla, evaporated milk, flour, baking powder and a pinch of salt.

Once completed, she divides the batter into three portions. To the first, she adds green food coloring and chopped walnuts. The second gets red food coloring and cut-up maraschino cherries; the third, melted unsweetened chocolate.

From there, the batter goes into a baking pan - the green is first, the red is second and the chocolate is third - then baked for 45 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

For the recipe's final step, Mrs. Ubaldini has put her own unique stamp on the cake by topping it with her homemade cream cheese frosting.

"Years ago, when they made it, it was sickeningly sweet. This one wasn't. I put it on everything," said Mrs. Ubaldini of the frosting which she also puts on Swedish Nut Cake, her personal favorite dessert.

The icing is terrific, and would probably make an old boot edible. Combined with the colorful, moist, flavor-packed cake, the result is a sublime treat.

Mrs. Ubaldini, who is of Lithuanian, German and Irish heritage, credits her husband, Paul, with making "an Italian out of me."

When they first got married, "I didn't know anything about cooking," she said. So, it was up to her mother-in-law, the late Mary Ubaldini, to show her the ins and outs of good Italian cooking, including how to make her own pasta.

Romolos Cannoli Spumoni Factory

Romolos Cannoli & Spumoni Factory

If the name “Romolos Cannoli & Spumoni Factory” conjures images of a monstrous warehouse lined with row after row of mass manufactured desserts, then reality could not be further from this perception.  Romolo’s Cannoli & Spumoni Factory is a cozy Italian dessert shop that prepares each dessert with the love and care you would expect from a local San Mateo corner shop.

Their traditional “cannolo” (The singular of “cannoli”) features a painstakingly prepared fried dough that holds together beautifully in your hand but disintegrates with a gratifying flaky “crunch” after after sinking your teeth into it.  The cannolo is filled with Romolo’s own special blend of Ricotta Cream that is really the heart of the dessert.  After this delicious base is prepared the good people of Romolo’s will garnish the cannolo to your liking with your choice of fresh pistachios, sweet cherries, or sweet dark chocolate.  My personal choice was a pistachio cannolo; it was delivered with the cannolo in the center of an intricate clay plate.  The sumptuous pastry was lavishly dusted with powdered sugar, bursting with sweet Ricotta Cream and tactfully decorated with pistachios at each end. So what’s the only thing better than that mouthwatering and ambrosial cannoli?  Getting that same cannoli for only ½ the price!  So that’s exactly what I did, all while waiting the few moments for my cannolo to be made.  I pulled out my phone, opened The Chatterfly App and shared my visit at Romolo’s with my friends on Facebook and Twitter for my instant reward of 50% off my first cannolo.  Better yet, after telling my friends about the deal, they too could receive the same deal just for sharing with their network via Chatterfly. After receiving my cannolo and paying at the register I walked to the far end of the dining room and sat at the window.  Outside, cars and people rushed by on 37th avenue, but inside with my cannolo I took my time.  I admired the children’s artwork on the wall paying homage to the Cannoli & Spumoni Factory and enjoyed crayon depicted scenes ranging from talking ice cream cones to families of walking cannoli.  The checkered tile flooring exudes an old timey ice cream shop feel and the golden chandeliers add a sort of storybook mystique to the dining room.

Overall, the environment at Romolo’s is the perfect one in which to indulge in all sorts of traditional Italian treats and as long as I use my Chatterfly App to keep acquiring points I’ll get a free Cannoli after every few purchases.  Now that I’ve discovered Romolo’s Cannoli & Spumoni the chance to earn points towards another one of these delicious treats is more than enough reason for me to keep coming back with more friends.  I’ll buy a round of Cannoli for my buddies, but I’m keeping The Chatterfly points!

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