Serpentone

Apples and dried fruit, nuts and sugar are the main ingredients for this classic Umbrian cake. The pastry is quite unusual: made with olive oil, flour, sugar and water, it has quite a different texture to butter pastry. The decoration of the cake is where the cook’s imagination takes flight - all kinds of expressions on the ‘snake’s’ face can be created using a few carefully placed ingredients. Some local cooks also add small coloured sweets to the snake, to represent scales. The cake is qu