Chocolate Pear Cake (Torta pera e cioccolato)

This cake is awesome!!. It was my first time trying it out and turned out so good that It is definitely in my list of cake-to-dos for any special occasion. By the way, this post is dedicated to my hubby... for being my culinary guinea pig.. hehehe :P


Ingredients:
A. Pears
7 pears
3 cups of white wine
3 tablespoons of sugar


B. Cake paste
100grams of chocolate cookies - grounded
100 grams sugar
4 eggs
200 grams flour
200 grams of dark chocolate
170 grams of butter (room temperature).
1 teaspoon of baking soda/yeast

For Section A:
Peel the pears and remove the seeds. Slice the pears. Marinade the pears with wine and sugar for 20 minutes. After that, boil the pears together with the marinade until the marinade evaporates. Cool the pears to room temperature.

For section B:
Chop the chocolate bar into smaller pieces. Melt it together with the 100grams of butter. Separate the egg yolks from the whites. In a bowl, beat the remaining butter together with the egg yolks. Add the melted chocolate mixture. Add the grounded chocolate cookies, flour and baking powder together and mix. In a separate bowl beat in the egg whites with sugar until they form stiff peaks. Stir in the egg white mixture with the cake mixture by blending it in together (dont overdo it as it will remove the air pockets).

Divide the cake mixture into 2 parts. Line a 9 inch baking pan with butter or greasproof paper. Pour the first part of the mixture on to a 9 inch baking pan. Then place the pears on section A into the pan and cover with the remainder cake mixture. Garnish the top of the mixture with remaining pears. Bake the mixture with the pears on 180 degrees for 40 minutes. Wait for cake to cool before removing from the pan.

 Enjoy... :-)

My visit to the Fontanelle Cemetery (Cimitero delle Fontanelle)

Cimitero Della fontanelle main entrance

Human remains.. skeletons.. bones everywhere... sounds creepy?.. Just like a movie out of twilight zone, the Fontanelle Cemetary is actually an ossuary or charnel house .  It is not your local cemetary where you see only tombstones.. here instead is like a mass graveyard full of human skeletal (skull and bones) remains. The place was named Fontanelle because in the past, there was an abundance of fresh water springs located near here during a dry period in Naples. 

The skulls and their houses

This cemetary is located in a cave on the hillside or Materdei in Naples. It is now a cultural heritage site.The ancient ossuary covers about 3,000 m2, and the cavity is estimated at around 30,000 m3.

There used to be a cult by local napoletans who are superstituous by nature. The anonymous skulls, also called "pezzentelle souls" is said to form a bridge between the underworld and the earth, which is said to provide communication between the worlds, the worlds of the living dead and the living as a sign of hope in the possibility of a aiding people. They adopt these skulls based on lottery wins or dreams by first polishing the skulls and then building little houses to house the skulls. There is also some offerings placed on the skulls, mostly coins on top of the skulls.
 

The cult of placing coins on top of the skulls

Concerns about the cult of Souls pezzentelle led the archbishop of Naples, Cardinal Corrado Ursi to close the cemetary to the public in the year l969. The cemetary was then abandoned for many years however was reorganized and tidied up since 2002, but still remained closed to the public. On May 23, 2010 the cemetery was reopened to the public (hence this is how i managed to write this article today).

Mass remains of skulls and bones

There are also a legend about a certain 'captain of the skull' which the story revolves around 2 newlyweds who desecrated the grounds of the cemetary before their wedding. Which further led to their demise by the curse of the captain of the skull.
 Apart of that, there is also some belief in the past that there are some skulls 'sweating' which the locals used to belief that it was because the soul belonging to that skull was in purgatory suffering the cleansing of its sins, but the truth is, the skull to actually collects humidity and tends to 'sweat'. 

This place is quite interesting from and anthropologic point of view and not for the faint hearted. To be honest, the place was quite peaceful and quiet.To sum it all up, the visit to this place got me thinking.... we are on this earth for just a short time. Sooner or later our body shall return back to the earth. So it is important for us to remember this and appreciate every moment we have by living it to the fullest. Life is short, embrace it and appreciate every single moment of it (ups and downs).