Italian Lombard Cornmeal Cakes | Pan de Mej
Updated: 6 days ago
Pan de mej are small flat cakes, and the word cake matters, because almost every photograph on the internet shows them as biscuits and they are not. The dough goes onto the tray as a thick disc and comes out of the oven wider and lower, golden and slightly crackled at the rim, sandy at the edge and soft in the middle, about the thickness of a finger. They are yellow the whole way through, they smell of butter and muscat, and they are eaten warm, often standing up, in the morning.
What makes them a specific thing rather than a generic cornmeal sweet is elderflower. Dried sambuco is worked into the dough and strewn across the top, and it gives a honeyed muscat perfume that arrives before the corn does. The second thing is what they are eaten with: panera, the thick sweet cream of the Milanese dairies, or a loose ricotta and cream mixture of the kind below. A pan de mej served dry and alone has lost half of its point.
The recipe here keeps the proportions a Milanese pasticceria would recognise and adds nothing that does not belong. The elderflower is ground into the sugar so that it actually releases, the butter is creamed rather than rubbed so the cakes spread flat as they should, and the cream is loosened with sieved ricotta to keep it from being merely sweet fat. Nothing is piped, nothing is moulded, and the finished cakes should look homemade because that is what they are.
Yield: 12 cakes, 6 servings of 2 with cream. Prep: 30 minutes. Chill: 1 hour. Bake: 16 minutes. Total: about 2 hours. Difficulty: easy. Course: dolce da colazione. Region: Lombardy, Milan and the dairy farms of the Milanese plain.
The Story
The name is older than the grain. Mej is Milanese for miglio, millet, and for centuries the flat breads of the Lombard poor were made from it, because millet grew fast, tolerated bad ground and asked almost nothing of the farmer. Maize reached the Po valley in the sixteenth century and spread through Lombardy and the Veneto with extraordinary speed, and by the seventeenth it had pushed millet off the fields almost entirely. The bread changed grain and kept its name, which is why a cake made of corn is still called the millet bread, and why you will also see it written pan meino or pan de mein.
Its date is 23 April, the feast of San Giorgio, and that is not decoration but bookkeeping. Across the Milanese plain the leases on the cascine, the great courtyard dairy farms, ran from San Giorgio to San Giorgio, so that single day opened and closed the agricultural year, settled accounts and moved families from one farm to another. The lattai, the milk sellers, marked it by giving pan de mej to their customers, and the customers ate them soaked in panera, the thick cream that was the dairy at its richest. A sweet tied to a contract date survives better than a sweet tied to nothing, and this one did.
The elderflower belongs to the same calendar. Sambucus nigra breaks into flower in the Lombard hedgerows in the last days of April and through May, exactly when the cakes were being made, and the flowers went into the dough because they were there and because they were free. That is the whole explanation, and it is a better one than most. Milanese pasticcerie still put pan de mej in the window around the feast, still dust them white, and still sell them by weight rather than by the piece, which tells you what kind of sweet this is.
Ingredients
For the cakes
Fine yellow cornmeal, fioretto grind, 1 1/4 cups (180 g)
All purpose flour, 1 cup (130 g)
Granulated sugar, 1/2 cup (100 g)
Dried elderflowers, 2 tbsp (4 g)
Unsalted butter, softened to about 65°F (18°C), 7 tbsp (100 g)
Whole eggs, room temperature, 2
Egg yolk, room temperature, 1
Whole milk, 2 tbsp (30 ml)
Baking powder, 1 1/2 tsp (6 g)
Finely grated lemon zest, from 1 lemon
Fine sea salt, 1/4 tsp (1.5 g)
For the tops
Dried elderflowers, whole, 1 tsp (1 g)
Granulated sugar, 1 tbsp (12 g)
Confectioners sugar, for dusting, 2 tbsp (15 g)
For the panera and ricotta cream
Heavy cream, very cold, 1 cup (240 ml)
Whole milk ricotta, drained overnight, 7 oz (200 g)
Confectioners sugar, 3 tbsp (22 g)
Vanilla seeds, from 1/2 pod
Elderflower cordial, 1 tbsp (15 ml), optional
Fine sea salt, 1 small pinch
Preparation
Grind the elderflower into the sugar
Put the granulated sugar and the 2 tablespoons of dried elderflowers into a spice grinder or a small food processor and pulse for about 30 seconds, until the flowers have broken up and the sugar has gone pale ivory and smells of muscat and honey. Dried elderflower is woody and it gives up very little on its own; what opens it is being abraded against sugar crystals. Without a grinder, chop the flowers as finely as a knife will take them and rub them into the sugar with your fingertips for a full minute. Keep the teaspoon of whole flowers for the tops separate and do not grind it.
Cream the butter with the scented sugar
Beat the softened butter with the elderflower sugar and the lemon zest on medium speed for about 4 minutes, until it is pale and holds a soft ridge on the beater. You are aerating on purpose, which is the opposite of what a crumbly short dough would want, because these cakes have to lift a little and then relax outwards. Stop while it still looks like thick buttercream. Beaten to a white fluff it carries too much air, and the cakes will dome in the middle, crack across the top and never settle into the flat disc they should be.
Add the eggs slowly
Whisk the 2 whole eggs, the extra yolk and the 2 tablespoons of milk together in a jug, then add this to the butter in five or six additions, beating well after each one. Room temperature eggs are not a nicety here. Cold egg dropped into creamed butter chills the fat, the emulsion breaks and the mixture curdles into something that bakes greasy and flat. If it does split, throw in a tablespoon of the measured flour and beat for 20 seconds, which will almost always bring it back.
Fold in the cornmeal and the flour
Whisk the fine cornmeal, the all purpose flour, the baking powder and the salt together, then add them to the butter in two goes on the lowest speed, stopping the moment the last dry streak disappears. The dough is soft and tacky, much closer to a thick batter than to a pastry, and that is correct. Use fioretto, the fine grind. The argument about grinds belongs to the krumiri, where it decides everything; in a cake this thin the only rule worth stating is that bramata would sit on the tongue as grit.
Chill the dough until it can be handled
Scrape the dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap, flatten it into a slab about 1 inch (2.5 cm) thick, wrap it and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. The rest does two separate jobs. Cornmeal hydrates far more slowly than wheat, and a dough baked straight from the mixer tastes faintly raw and sandy in the centre. Meanwhile the butter firms, so the discs hold their shape for the first minutes in the oven and spread in a controlled way instead of flooding. Overnight is better than 1 hour if you have the time.
Shape the discs and leave room to spread
Heat the oven to 350°F (175°C) with a rack in the middle and line two heavy trays with parchment. Divide the dough into 12 pieces of about 1 3/4 oz (50 g), roll each between damp palms into a ball, set them well apart and press each one down into a disc roughly 2 1/2 inches (6 cm) across and 1/2 inch (12 mm) thick. Leave at least 2 inches (5 cm) of clear tray around every one. They finish at about 3 1/2 inches (9 cm) across, and cakes that touch in the oven steam at the join and stay pale and damp there.
Top and bake to a two tone colour
Scatter the reserved whole elderflowers over the discs and press them lightly so they hold, then sprinkle the tablespoon of granulated sugar across the tops. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, turning the trays once halfway, until the rims are clearly golden brown while the centres are still blond and set but yielding to a finger. That colour contrast is the doneness signal. A pan de mej baked until the middle is uniformly brown has had about 3 minutes too many and will be dry by the next morning. Let them firm on the tray for 5 minutes before you move them, because they tear while hot.
Whip the cream and fold in the ricotta
Push the drained ricotta through a fine mesh sieve into a cold bowl. This takes a minute and it is what stops a home made ricotta cream feeling chalky, since the curd grain survives any amount of whisking. Whip the very cold heavy cream with the confectioners sugar, the vanilla seeds and the pinch of salt to soft peaks only, then fold the sieved ricotta in by hand in three additions, adding the elderflower cordial with the second. The finished cream should slump slowly off a spoon rather than stand up. Refrigerate it and fold it once more before serving if it has tightened.
Plating
Pan de mej resists being made into restaurant food, and the honest thing is to say so. In Milan it is eaten out of paper at the counter at ten in the morning with a coffee, and any plate that argues with that loses the argument. What follows is the most that should be done to it, not a licence to build something taller.
Let the cakes cool to just warm, then dust them with confectioners sugar through a fine sieve held high, so the sugar falls as a veil and not as a drift. Set two cakes on a small plate, one flat and one leaning against it so the crackled surface and the golden rim both show. Spoon a generous quenelle of the ricotta and cream mixture beside them rather than on them, because the cake should stay dry until the person eating it decides otherwise. Warm cake against cold cream is the entire contrast, and it starts working the moment the two touch, which is why they meet on the plate and not before.
If you want a third element, the right ones are seasonal and quiet: a spoonful of strawberries macerated in sugar and lemon, a few fresh elderflower heads in May, or a teaspoon of elderflower cordial drawn around the cream. What has no place here is chocolate, caramel, berry coulis or any kind of sauce drawn in lines across the plate. This is a peasant cake that became a city breakfast, and it looks wrong the moment it is decorated like a dessert.
Professional Technique
The first technique is the extraction of the elderflower, and it is where most versions of this cake quietly fail. The aromatic compounds in dried sambuco sit inside a tough dry floret that will not release them into a batter in the time a cake takes to mix and bake, which is why so many pan de mej smell of nothing but butter. Grinding the flowers against sugar tears that structure open mechanically, and the sugar then holds the released volatiles until the butter takes them up. Fat is the carrier: creamed butter dissolves the aromatic fraction and distributes it evenly through the crumb, so the perfume is in every bite rather than concentrated in whatever flower your teeth happen to find.
The second is the deliberate manufacture of spread. A pan de mej has to leave the oven wider and lower than it went in, and three decisions produce that. The butter is creamed rather than rubbed, so the mixture starts soft and full of small bubbles that collapse outward as the fat melts. The proportion of egg is high enough to make the dough a batter rather than a pastry, so it flows before the starch sets. And the baking powder pushes upward for the first 4 or 5 minutes, opening the crumb, before the structure gives and the disc settles. Remove any one of the three and you get a thick biscuit that never relaxes.
The third is the balance between corn and wheat, which is a structural calculation and not a matter of taste. Cornmeal contains no gluten forming proteins at all, so every bit of the network that holds this cake together comes from the single cup of wheat flour. Push the cornmeal much past 58 percent of the total flour weight, as recipes chasing a more rustic result often do, and the crumb has nothing to hang from: the cakes crumble when lifted and go stale within hours. The proportion here, 180 g of cornmeal to 130 g of wheat, is the point at which the corn still dominates the flavour and the colour while the wheat still does its job.
Texture and Moisture Control
The target is three textures in one small cake: a thin crisp golden rim, a sandy mouthfeel from the corn particles through the body, and a centre that stays tender for two days. They compete. Longer baking secures the rim and destroys the centre, and the only way to have both is the two tone bake described above, pulling the trays while the middle is still pale. A finger pressed lightly into the centre should leave a mark that slowly fills back in. If the mark stays, give it 2 more minutes; if there is no mark at all, it is already past.
Moisture management starts before the oven. Corn starch granules absorb water slowly and at room temperature they carry on absorbing for hours, which is exactly why the dough is rested. Skip the chill and the granules take their water during and after the bake instead, drawing it out of the crumb, and the cake that was soft at noon is dry by evening. The same mechanism works in your favour afterwards: a properly hydrated pan de mej holds its moisture far longer than its low fat content would suggest.
Serving temperature decides how all of this reads. The cakes are best at about 85°F (30°C), warm but not hot, where the butter is soft enough to release its aroma and the crumb has not yet gone waxy. The cream goes the other way and should be at about 40°F (4°C), straight from the refrigerator, whipped only to soft peaks so it stays pourable. Whipped stiff it turns into a dense plug that sits on the tongue rather than melting, and the whole point of panera is that it collapses the moment it meets a warm cake.
Professional Mise en Place
Almost everything here can be done in advance, and the only genuine à la minute element is the dusting. Build the day backwards from when the cakes should be warm on the table.
Equipment and tools
Spice grinder or small food processor for the elderflower and sugar
Stand mixer with the paddle, or a hand mixer and a wide bowl
Two heavy flat baking trays and parchment, never thin dark trays
Fine mesh sieve for the ricotta and a second one kept dry for the dusting
Digital scale, since 50 g portions by eye come out uneven and bake unevenly
Prepared ahead
Elderflower sugar, ground and sealed in a jar, up to 1 month ahead
Ricotta set to drain in a sieve over a bowl, refrigerated, from the night before
Cake dough mixed, wrapped and refrigerated, up to 2 days ahead
Dough portioned into 50 g balls on a lined tray, covered, up to 12 hours ahead
Cream and ricotta mixture folded, refrigerated, up to 8 hours ahead
Service setup
Oven at 350°F (175°C) and fully up to temperature before the trays go in
Cakes baked in one batch and left on a rack, covered loosely with a cloth
Cream bowl sitting in a larger bowl of iced water if the room is warm
Confectioners sugar in a dry sieve, well away from any steam
Plates at room temperature, so the cakes do not cool on contact
Chef Tips
Buy your dried elderflower from a herbalist or a tea supplier rather than a supermarket baking aisle, and smell it before you pay. Good dried sambuco is cream coloured and smells sweetly of muscat grapes through the bag. Flowers that have gone grey and smell of hay have lost the volatile fraction entirely, and no amount of grinding will bring it back; you will have made a plain cornmeal cake and wondered why.
Weigh the portions. Twelve pieces of 50 g each bake in the same 16 minutes, and that is the only reason the two tone colour works as a doneness cue. Split by eye, the tray will hold pieces from 40 to 65 g, the small ones will be dry at the rim before the large ones have set in the middle, and you will end up choosing which half of the batch to sacrifice.
Drain the ricotta overnight in a sieve set over a bowl and discard what comes out, however little it looks. Supermarket ricotta carries a surprising amount of loose whey, and that whey will thin the folded cream over the next hour until it weeps on the plate. If the ricotta is genuinely dry and firm to begin with, skip the draining but still push it through the sieve.
Make them the day before if you are serving them for breakfast, which is what Milan does. Cool the cakes completely, store them airtight without any sugar on them, and warm them for 4 minutes at 300°F (150°C) in the morning before dusting. They come back almost exactly as they were, which is more than can be said for most butter cakes, and the elderflower is arguably clearer on the second day.
Common Mistakes
Using coarse cornmeal. Bramata and polenta grinds have particles far too large for a cake this thin, and they do not soften in 16 minutes. The result is gritty on the tongue and nothing about the method will fix it, since the problem is particle size and not hydration. Ask for fioretto, or for the finest yellow cornmeal the shop carries.
Adding the elderflower whole to the dough. Dropped in unground, the florets keep their aroma locked up and contribute nothing but the occasional dry woody fragment between the teeth. Grind them into the sugar first and keep only a teaspoon whole, for the tops, where they are there to be seen rather than tasted.
Rubbing the butter in instead of creaming it. The rubbing method builds a short crumbly dough that holds its shape, which is precisely what you do not want. Pan de mej has to spread into a flat disc, and that spread comes from creamed aerated butter collapsing outward in the oven. Rub the butter in and you have made a thick biscuit.
Baking until the centres are brown. The cake is done when the rim is golden and the middle is still pale and just set, which looks underbaked to anyone used to cookies. Trust the rim. By the time the centre has coloured to match, the crumb has lost the moisture that keeps it tender the following day.
Crowding the tray. These spread by about 40 percent in every direction. Cakes placed less than 2 inches (5 cm) apart run together, steam at the join and come out with a pale damp seam that stays soft while the rest crisps, and separating them afterwards tears both.
Whipping the cream to stiff peaks. Stiff cream folded with ricotta becomes a dense paste that sits on a warm cake instead of melting into it. Stop at soft peaks, where the cream still falls slowly from the whisk, and remember that the folding itself thickens the mixture further.
Dusting the cakes while they are hot. Confectioners sugar dropped onto a hot surface dissolves on contact and turns into a thin transparent syrup film. Wait until the cakes are barely warm, dust from a height through a dry sieve, and do it within a few minutes of serving.
Wine Pairing
Moscato di Scanzo DOCG: A Lombard bottle for a Lombard cake, and the closest thing to a local answer. Made from grapes dried on racks on the hills above Bergamo, it is a red passito with rose, dried fig and a thread of sweet spice, and it keeps just enough tannin to stop the ricotta cream turning cloying on the palate. Its floral top note lands on the elderflower directly rather than running alongside it.
Sangue di Giuda dell'Oltrepò Pavese DOC: The sweet frothy red of the Pavia hills, low in alcohol and full of raspberry and violet, and the bottle a Lombard family would actually open with something like this. The bubbles cut straight through the butter in the crumb and the fat in the cream. Its sweetness is moderate, which matters, because the cake itself is only lightly sweet and a heavier wine would bury it. Serve it at about 50°F (10°C).
Oltrepò Pavese Metodo Classico DOCG: For anyone who would rather finish dry, and the most interesting choice of the five. Pinot Nero vinified white and aged on its lees gives bread crust, toasted hazelnut and green apple, and those baked notes run in parallel with the toasted corn rather than competing with it. The acidity and the fine persistent bead scour the cream off the palate between mouthfuls, which no sweet wine will do.
Recioto di Soave DOCG: Garganega dried on racks into midwinter and fermented to a golden wine of apricot, bitter almond and white flowers. The floral register is the reason it belongs here: it meets the elderflower without adding anything heavier or darker to the glass. Acidity stays high through all that sugar, so the sweetness never smothers a cake as delicate as this one. Pour it cool and in small measures.
Moscato d'Asti DOCG: The obvious choice and still a good one, particularly in the morning, which is when Milan eats these. Barely 5 percent alcohol, gently sparkling, all white peach, sage and orange blossom, it treats the pan de mej as a breakfast cake rather than a formal dessert. Buy the youngest vintage you can find, since those aromatics fade noticeably within a year of harvest, and serve it thoroughly cold.
Storage & Reheating
Store the cakes bare, without any confectioners sugar on them, in an airtight tin at room temperature. They keep for 3 days and are genuinely good on the second, when the corn has settled and the elderflower has come forward. Never refrigerate them: the low temperature accelerates starch retrogradation in a corn heavy crumb and they go dry and chalky within a day. Put a strip of parchment between layers, since the sugared tops stick to one another.
They freeze well, which is not true of every butter cake. Cool them completely, wrap them in pairs in plastic and then in foil, and freeze for up to 2 months. Thaw them still wrapped at room temperature for about an hour so the condensation forms on the wrapping rather than on the crust. To bring any cake back, warm it for 4 minutes at 300°F (150°C) on a rack rather than a tray, so the base dries instead of steaming, then cool it for a minute and dust it.
The cream is the shorter lived half and it does not freeze at all, since both the whipped cream and the ricotta separate irreversibly on thawing. Keep it covered in the refrigerator for up to 2 days, expect it to slacken a little, and fold it briefly by hand before serving to bring it back. Never rewhip it with a machine, which will take it past the point of no return in seconds. If it has wept, pour off the liquid rather than stirring it back in.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 6 servings of 2 cakes with about 1/4 cup of the cream:
Calories: 470 kcal
Total Fat: 27 g
Saturated Fat: 16 g
Trans Fat: 0.7 g
Unsaturated Fat: 9 g
Cholesterol: 145 mg
Sodium: 200 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 48 g
Fiber: 1.6 g
Total Sugars: 23 g
Added Sugars: 19 g
Protein: 9 g
Lactose: 3.6 g
Principal micronutrients: calcium, phosphorus, vitamin A, vitamin B2, selenium, magnesium
These figures are estimates. The cream is the variable that moves them most, and serving the cakes on their own in the Milanese way takes roughly 150 kcal and 13 g of fat off each portion.
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