New Year, new decade. BTW, Happy 2020 :)

Also this year, the Christmas holidays went way too fast. I already miss the carols, the Christmas’ songs, not to mention all the Christmas’s treats: panettone, pandoro etc etc…The holidays left me with a few pounds more and all that New Year resolutions, taken during the enthusiasm of the Eve’s party. And I bet that all those resolutions taste as stale bread the first week of the January, already :P

It is not my habit making New Year resolutions, but here in North America they are part of the Eve’ party along with champagne and fireworks. Usually, my New Year resolution is to do not make New Year resolutions. However, this year I decided to commit myself to 3 cooking challenges. And committing myself publicly, should increase the chances of success :D

Baking the marzipan cake that my grandfather called “the Hungarian”

It is actually known as delizia alle mandorle (almond delight), but given the originality of my grandfather, I won’t be surprised if he re-named it differently. This cake consists of a sponge cake soaked with alchermes liquor and filled with apricot jam. The cake is then garnished with marzipan. It is classified as one of the typical Tuscan cakes, but you can find it a bit everywhere in Italy.

It is a wonderful and demanding cake. One of the biggest challenges is actually the garnishing: the marzipan should be firm enough to avoid it collapsing during baking (and I talk by experience!).

Learn how to deep fry (in particular now, with the Carnival looming)

Once a week my grandma used to make an excellent fritto misto (assorted deep fried food, usually vegetables and meat). She made it so often that her technique approached perfection.

I never managed to reproduce her results (well, maybe I didn’t try hard enough…). For. a few years, I have totatally ignored deep fried foods, as I considered them not very healthy. But lately my interest in deep fried food has grown stronger and stronger. Actually, I would enjoy it once in a while. Unfortunately, my timid tentatives at deep frying have resulted in a gigantic failure. Last time I tried to deep fry zucchini’s flowers, I ended up with some mushy and oily stuff, nothing as the perfect crispy and light fritto of my grandma.

But currently, deep frying is one of my official resolutions for the 2020! In particular now, that Carnival is looming (and Carnival, for some reason I ignore, is characterized by the presence of deep fried treats). I have already done all my research on deep frying techniques and, nonetheless, on the mistakes to avoid!

Succeeding with making a soufflé

Frankly, I tried that when I launched the Edible Molecules project. I would have done at least 10 tentatives. Souffle’ is a colloid system where air is suspended into a liquid (that gets then coagulated). Well, my shuffle’ started well, by rising properly and looking promising. But it collapsed as soon as I removed that from the oven (a classic!). This year I promised myself to try again…do you have any trick to suggest, maybe? :)

Have you made any resolution for the 2020? Let me know in the comments!