Italian Cooking and Italian Dessert Recipes

You could never inveigle Sophia Loren to go on a low-carb diet. This ageless beauty from Italy is passionate about her pasta. As she told the world: "Everything you see I owe to spaghetti." In fact, in her book ‘Sophia Loren on Beauty’, she explains that it is not the pasta that is fattening, but what is put on it. Like her svelte figure, her advice is sound even today. Italian food, made simply, is both healthy and can even help you to lose weight. All you need to do is watch the portions and go easy on the rich, thick creamy sauces.

Most people still associate Italian food with the image of a large guy devouring spaghetti topped with meatball sauce. In reality, in Italy spaghetti with meatball sauce is hardly ever eaten. While the Italian cooking does have a few meat sauce recipes that usually require laborious and long preparation, but they also have a vast variety of pasta dishes made with seafood and vegetables.

And as for the pasta itself, it is not restricted to just spaghetti. Again, there is an incredible range of sizes, shapes, and forms of pasta, most of which are distinctive to particular regions. The variety in Italian cooking, the reliance on ingredients that are fresh which are cooked immediately, plus the extensive use of olive oil, vegetables and fruit contribute to making Italian food both delicious and healthy.

And as for Italian desserts, they have an endless array of chocolates, cookies and various other enticing ambrosial offerings, the flavor of which ranges from slightly bitter to fairly sweet. In general, Italian desserts are not overly sweet and are usually best served with an Italian wine. Given here is a small sample of Italian dessert recipes for people who love to indulge in gastronomic delights:

Italian Cream Cheese Layer Cake

2 cups all-purpose flour
4 egg yolks
4 egg whites
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp baking soda
2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup shortening
1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup chopped pecans
1 packet flaked coconut, (3.5 ounce)

1 packet cream cheese, (8 ounce), softened
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
4 cups confectioner’s sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup pecans, chopped

Begin by preheating the oven to 165 degrees C (325 degrees F). Grease 3 round cake pans, 9 inches in diameter. Combine the buttermilk and soda and put it aside for a few minutes. Put the butter, shortening, oil, and sugar in a large bowl, and cream them. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, beating the mixture well. Then mix the buttermilk mix and flour, a little at a time, alternatively, into the creamed mixture. Add one teaspoon of vanilla. Take a large bowl and beat the egg whites in it until stiff peaks begin forming. Fold in 1/3 of the beaten whites into the batter, then add the rest of it, mixing well so that no white streaks remain. Stir in the coconut and pecans. Pour this batter into the prepared pans. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Remove the cake and allow it to cool.

To make the cream cheese frosting, beat the cream cheese, margarine or butter, vanilla, and confectioner’s sugar. Mix in one cup of the chopped pecans, frost, and fill the cake with this frosting.

Cranberry Biscotti

3 cups flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3 eggs
1/4 cup butter
2 tsp orange peel, grated
3 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup dried cranberries, chopped coarsely
1/4 cup almonds, chopped