Stresa Travel Recipes: Halloween Pumpkin and Chocolate Loaf

Yep, it's Halloween and I'm following last year's pumpkin recipes with a sweet treat for this year! I love baking and make a cake each week to enjoy as merenda in the office every afternoon. The main part of this cake comes from the Leeks & Limoni blog but with a little less sugar, added chocolate and some Halloween inspiration. It makes a nice moist, stodgy cake!

I tend to make most cakes in a loaf tin as it is easier to portion up and pack to bring to the office, but the original recipe calls for a 24cm diameter cake tin. If you want to go all out with the Halloween theme you could always add orange coloured frosting and/or chocolate spider webs :)

At the market here I can't get the traditional large round orange pumpkin so I used my usual squat green-skinned type of squash in my first run through and a mix of that and butternut squash in my second go..

The finished sticky, stodgy, chocolatey, Halloween pumpkin loaf 

Ingredients
350g pumpkin/squash (weight peeled and deseeded)
200g self-raising flour
4 medium eggs
100g butter, melted
150g caster sugar
40g unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
Zest of 1 orange
0.25 tsp grated nutmeg (the nutmeg I have is in a jar with a built in mill so I gave it a couple of twists)
40g dark chocolate drops

Heat the oven to 180°C/356°F and line your loaf or cake tin.

Firstly make your squash purée. I made mine by chopping up the squash into 2.5cm chunks and using a pressure cooker. Mash the cooked squash until smooth and leave to cool.

Whisk the sugar and eggs together in a bowl until creamy and increased in volume. Fold in the sieved flour, cocoa and spices. Add the melted butter and squash purée and mix until everything is combined. Add the chocolate drops and orange zest.

Bake for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. I followed the advice of the Leeks & Limoni blog and covered the cake with foil for the last 10 minutes to stop the top from burning.

Cool in the tin for about 15-20 minutes before turning out to cool completely on a wire rack.

Let me know if you give the cake a go and if you add any Halloween twists of your own!

Sarah, Viaggi Tomassucci

Stresa History: The Mottarone Railway

At 12.55 on the 13th May 1963 the Stresa to Mottarone Railway trains rolled into the depot for the last time. Ever since I first saw the beautiful posters advertising the railway I've been fascinated by it. As any of you that have chatted with Luca in the office will know, he's a bit of a railway geek, and I guess some of that has rubbed off on me! So I thought I'd share some of the history of the railway with you, along with some old photos of Stresa, which I always find interesting.

So why the need for a railway?
Mottarone was already becoming popular with writers and travellers at the end of the 1800's and was mentioned in the 1869 Baedeker Guide. However, it was difficult to reach the summit and was a tricky 4 hour hike up from Stresa. By 1885 there were already discussions about how it could be made easier for all visitors to reach the top and enjoy the panoramic views.

The brains behind the railway and early planning

The first plans for a railway were presented by local engineer Tommaso Tadini at the Grand Hotel des Iles Borromées in 1888 and people loved it. Despite the banking crisis of 1890, Tadini persevered and a chance meeting with engineer Alessandro Scotti at the Caffe Bolongaro in Stresa pushed forward his plans. Scotti was director of the first electric power plant in Europe in Milan and together they discussed funding, logistics and the engineering challenges of the railway.

The depot at Stresa Railway Station with the Stresa - Mottarone train

Final approval and construction

The final project, based on Tadini's original plans, was approved in 1905. The railway would be a combination of rack and pinion and adhesion and in 1908 the "Società Ferrovie del Mottarone" was formed. The Borromean family, who own land at the top of Mottarone, made it available for tracks to be laid and stations to be built. In 1909 everyone signed on the dotted line and 20 years after the first project was presented, construction got under way.

Stresa ferry station square where the train started (left of photo)

The Inauguration

Construction was quite fast and the first train took journalists and railway workers from the ferry station square in Stresa to the summit of Mottarone on 11th July 1911. The first public services started the next day with a big four day long inauguration held in September. Inaugural celebrations included concerts, gala dinners and lunches, a swimming competition, a regatta and a football match.

The station at Mottarone (when you walk out of the cable car station the building is still there, on the left, opposite Hotel Eden)

Facts, figures and curiosities

• The railway ran on a one metre gauge track
• The climb from Stresa to Mottarone was 1,182 metres (3,878 feet) and the difference in temperature used to ruin the paint work on the carriages
• The first return ticket in 1911 cost 9 Lire
• In its heyday in 1945 the train carried 108,000 passengers in a single year, due to the high amount of Milanese evacuees living in Alpino
• The train was used to transport snow from Mottarone to use in ice-boxes in Stresa
• When the snow conditions were right you could ski almost all the way down into Stresa and in 1935 Mottarone had a ski jump built and hosted the first ever grand slalom
• To make way for the train to run through the centre of Stresa, the River Crée was bricked over, so remember, when you walk up Via Roma (from Hotel Milan Speranza up past the supermarket) there's a river running beneath your feet!
• The stops were Stresa Ferry Station - Stresa Train Station (where you can still see the remains of the depot) - Vedasco - Vezzo/Carpugnino - Gignese/Levo - Alpino - Borromeo Saint Eurosio Church - Mottarone
• The journey was 9.9km (6.2 miles) and took 65 minutes
• You can see one of the original carriages at the Transport Museum in Ranco

1921 The train coming up Via Principe Tomaso (view looking down towards the lakefront, the train is between where Hotels Milan Speranza and Au Lac now stand )

So why did it all end?

There's no doubt that a narrow gauge railway heading up Mottarone would be a huge attraction today, but in the post war years infrastructure was improved and the road between Alpino and Mottarone was tarmacked. More and more people owned cars and passenger numbers on the railway dwindled. In 1959 the Minister for Transport declared that the railway was losing too much money and that a cable car should be built. So the railway was dismantled, a replacement bus service introduced and, in 1970 the current cable car started service.  

A little help from our friends
I'd like to give a big thank to Andrea Lazzarini, local historian and owner of publishers, Scenari Editoria & Communicazione for the use of his images in this post. I also got a lot of the background from his book 1911-2011 Ferrovia Elettrica Stresa - Mottarone . His books about Stresa, Baveno and the local area, including one in English, are available at the online store. His books are also available at the Leone bookshop in Piazza Cadorna, Stresa. All photos remain his property and permission for use is requested.

Sarah, Viaggi Tomassucci