A Mini Grape Gripe and an Anise-Spiked Cake for Fall
Recipe for Torta all'Uva con Anice e Sambuca; plus links and NEW DATES for a second Food Writers in Italy in 2025
Welcome to Buona Domenica, a weekly newsletter of Italian home cooking and baking. I’m a journalist, cooking teacher, occasional tour guide, and author of eight cookbooks on Italian cuisine.
FOOD WRITERS IN PIEMONTE, FALL 2025: I’m excited to announce that Kathy Gunst and I have added a second Food Writers in Piemonte workshop to our 2025 schedule. This five-day workshop and tour will take place Oct. 3-8, 2025. The itinerary will be similar to our sold-out May workshop. If you are interested in this small-group experience, please send me an email at domenica@domenicacooks.com for more information.
This week’s newsletter features a recipe for Torta all’Uva con Anice e Sambuca—fresh grape cake spiked with aniseed and Sambuca. The newsletter is free for all subscribers, and the recipe is accessible to paid subscribers.
Click here to browse through the newsletter archive. If you’re looking for a particular recipe, you’ll find all Buona Domenica recipes—170 and counting—indexed here, ready to download and print—a function for paid subscribers. If you are able to do so, please consider supporting my work by becoming one.
Don’t forget to click on the ❤️ icon to like this post. This one gesture really helps to spread the word. Grazie!
On to the newsletter…
A couple of Wednesdays ago, I scooped up a basket of grapes from the Twin Springs Fruit Farm stall at my local farmers’ market. They were nothing like the grapes you get at the supermarket. They were not as big as dates or as hard and crunchy as dill pickles. They were not watery. They had bloomy sour skins and soft, juicy centers. (Watery and juicy are not the same.) They were what grapes ought to be, IMO.
Supermarket grapes have been disappointing me for years. All of the complexity has been bred out of them. They have become what we call in Italian “grossi e fessi,” or “big and stupid.” They are crunchy, yes, and their skins are thin and non-intrusive. But they don’t have much flavor.
Even weirder, though, are the new hybrids that have hit the market in recent years, the ones that proclaim to taste like cotton candy and gum drops and, disconcertingly, do. If you’ve shopped for grapes in the grocery store in the last couple of years, you’ve probably come across them.
The company leading this innovation is the California-based Grapery. Their flavored grapes are, apparently, entirely natural, the result of years of cross-breeding and experimentation, and no genetic modification is involved. Here’s a blurb from the company’s website:
“We credit this to our innovative and sustainable farming practices in California’s southern San Joaquin Valley, where the days are hot and nights are warm—just the way our grapes like it. We pick them by hand, handle with care, and proudly serve them to you so you may enjoy their pure one-of-a-kind taste.
This wasn’t a process born overnight. It’s the culmination of family-owned principles refined over the years by Founder, Jack Pandol and CEO, Jim Beagle.”
That’s fine, I guess, and I am not entirely anti-progress when it comes to table grapes. I truly appreciate the miracle of seedless grapes! Still, I have to ask: Why must we produce fruit that tastes like candy? Do we really want kids to think grapes should taste like cotton candy? Why can’t fruit taste like…fruit?
Back to the farmers’ market grapes, pictured above. The grapes I bought are a variety called Mars, a sort of seedless cousin to Concord grapes that was developed in Arkansas. They are reddish-blue with a tart slip skin (meaning it slips off easily) and soft, sweet, slightly musky flesh. They are good for pressing into juice or cooking down into jam and also for snacking on.
I had planned to do nothing with them beyond picking them, one by one, off the stems whenever I passed by the basket on the kitchen counter. But then I thought about grapes and anise, an autumn duet I love. In Preserving Italy, there’s a recipe for grapes in spiced grappa. The grapes are steeped at length in the strong brandy, which is spiked with star anise and other spices, then served chilled as a sort of after dinner spoon digestivo. They are potent little flavor bombs and you have to be careful not to eat too many of them.
Another of my favorite grape and anise combos is this recipe for grape focaccine (mini focaccias), which even just linking to it here makes me want to get started on a batch. (Recipe accessible to paid subscribers.)
Normally, I am all about apple cake in fall. But once the idea for a new grape-anise pairing took hold, I could not resist the thought of blending them in a cake. I started with a search on the internet, where I found this starting point. Then I brought in elements from this apple and anise loaf cake, adapted from Irina Georgescu’s baking book Tava, and the Sambuca apple cake on my website (also in Everyday Italian). I made other changes, too, adding ricotta, for tenderness, and cornmeal, for color and texture. The grapes are folded whole into the batter and scattered on top. They soften as they bake, dotting the cake crumb with pretty purple splotches. This is my new favorite cake for the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.
(Scroll down for the recipe.)
A FEW LINKS
Before we get to the recipe, I wanted to share links to a small handful of articles that caught my attention recently that you might also be interested in.
CARLA TOMASI OBITUARY: I recently wrote about the death of chef Carla Tomasi, a friend and wonderful cook. The Guardian has published this obituary, which gives you a good picture of who she was and her relevance in the world of food, both in London in the 1980s and, more recently, in Rome.
CULTIVATING HAZELNUTS IN THE U.S.: Farms in the Upper Midwest are experimenting with growing hazelnut trees to expand the agricultural economy and combat problems like soil erosion. Source: NPR
ITALY: CLUB MED OR THE REAL DEAL? A scattering of newsletters have taken on the subject of overtourism in Italy. This one, published last week by
in her newsletter, delves into the difference between the Italy we see on social media—a place of luxury resorts, endless beauty and bespoke experiences—and the reality (both good and bad) for those who live there.I’d love to hear your thoughts on overtourism in Italy…or anywhere, as it seems to be a growing concern around the world.
RECIPE: Torta all’Uva con Anice e Sambuca
This cake works best with smallish, softer grapes than what you typically find in the supermarket. Good varieties include Mars, Jupiter, and Vanessa. Look for them at farmers’ markets and smaller grocery stores that sell local produce.
Makes one 8-inch (23-cm) cake, to serve 8 or more
Click below for the full recipe, available to paid subscribers:
Thanks, as always, for reading, subscribing, and sharing.
Alla prossima,
Domenica
'Why must we produce fruit that tastes like candy? Why can't we produce fruit that tastes like fruit?' Such good questions, Domenica. As so often, I found myself nodding in agreement with you. It's so sad watching the beautiful rich variety of complex flavours that fruit possesses being narrowed down over the years by growers to simple sweetness.
It’s funny I assumed those “cotton candy” grapes were trying to riff on the brief season of muscat grapes. I used to get so excited to see the muscats show up here in late spring (no idea where they come from!). Tried the cotton candy ones once and didn’t like them!
I love the sound of this cake ✨