Jumbolatto

This is an Italian coffee cake of unknown origin that was made in my hometown around the holidays. The letter J does not exist in Italian, so this is clearly the wrong spelling. I searched for both "jumbolatto" and "giumbolatto" and found nothing.

While we like the taste of jumbolatto, we find it can be a little dry, so I will be experimenting with the recipe to make it moister. I'm starting with my Aunt Ida's version here. One possible change is to cook at 325F for 45 minutes and to also monitor the internal temperature so we can change the final temperature the next time.

Dough:

6 large eggs (336 g)

1 cup (218 g) Crisco vegetable oil

1 cup (237 g) warm water

1 Tbsp + 1 tsp baking powder

6 cups (900 g) unbleached all-purpose flour

 

Filling:

cinnamon

sugar

chopped walnuts

halved Maraschino cherries (without juice)

halved Hershey's milk chocolate kisses

 

Icing:

1/4 lb (113 g) confectioner’s sugar

milk for desired thickness

 

1.     Preheat oven to 350F.

2.     Mix the dough ingredients together.

3.     Split dough into 6 balls.

4.     Take one dough and make it square and 1/2" to 3/4" thick.

5.     Sprinkle very thin layer of cinnamon and sugar.

6.     Add some chopped walnuts, halved Maraschino cherries, and halved Hershey's kisses.

7.     Roll up like a jelly roll and place on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

8.     Repeat steps 4-7 for the other 5 balls.

9.     Bake for 35 min in the center of the oven.

10.  Cool completely.

11.  Drizzle a very generous amount of icing on top.

12.  Optional: add multi-color nonpareil sprinkles on wet icing. My mom used to do this.

13.  Cut into slices when ready to serve.