Day 11: A Total Panforte Disaster

Panforte was among the new recipes I wanted to try this year. It's a traditional Italian Christmas cake, combining candied fruit and different kinds of nuts with honey, sugar, and spices. As the name suggests, it's very rich - and it keeps well, even several months.

I had a stash of different nuts I had bought still back in Germany, and I thought this would be an ideal purpose for using them. I had read that the traditional panforte from Sienna combines 17 different ingredients, because the city of Sienna has 17 districts.

So I chose the following 17 ingredients: pine nuts, pistachios, almonds, hazelnuts, chocolate, cocoa powder, flour, sugar, honey, butter, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, cardamom, cloves, and Cointreau and adapted my recipe from that of Nigella.

All seemed to be perfect - the batter, the smell, and the taste and texture of my panforte just after I'd taken it out of the oven (I made four small ones and thought we'd eat the first one right away). It was like chocolate fudge and different nuts married with ginger bread! Heavenly indeed...

...until the disaster happened: as soon as the three other panforte cakes had cooled, it became clear that they could only be eaten by a robot or anyone else having their teeth replaced by chain saws.

I even tried to soak one of them in hot water with some honey in it, but the only thing that happened was that some of the chocolate dissolved in the water - and the panforte itself was still totally inedible (at least for a human being with a normal set of teeth).

The mistake might have been that I kept the panforte too long in the oven  - although they were still very soft when I took them out; anyway, too many precious ingredients are now on their way to a landfill site for me to try panforte any time soon :(

 

Frozen Yoghurt with Lemon and Honey

This morning I walked past our local frozen yoghurt bar, and it struck me how perfectly frozen yoghurt would fit in my current dessert series! You know, the desserts that make themselves while you’re eating your main dish.

The convenience of frozen yoghurt over other types of ice cream is not just that it contains less fat and mostly sugar as well. It also helps you avoid one crucial and very time-consuming step: yoghurt is already cold enough for your ice-cream maker (as long as you keep your yoghurt in the fridge, that is ;) ), so no need to cool it before feeding it to your ice cream maker…

I decided to flavour my frozen yoghurt with lemon and honey – but feel free to try other flavours as well!

For a vegan version, use non-dairy yoghurt and sweeten it with sugar or agave syrup, for example.

This is what you need for three smallish portions:

• 500ml plain yoghurt


• 2 Tbsp liquid honey


• 1 tsp grated lemon zest

To make this is ridiculously easy. Just combine yoghurt, honey, and lemon zest, and make the frozen yoghurt according to your ice cream maker’s instructions. With mine, this amount of frozen yoghurt took 15 minutes to make – exactly the time it took us to eat our pizzas! Decorate and serve.

Sweet Pesto with Mint and Almonds

The other night I was lying in my bed and couldn’t sleep. Then suddenly I had a vision: sweet pesto! With mint instead of basil and almonds instead of pine nuts. I just couldn’t wait until next day to try it out!

I also wanted to check if I was the first person ever to have thought about making a sweet pesto out of mint, honey, and almonds. I hoped I was. I was already picturing every supermarket in Finland selling a kit including all that it takes to make THE Mint Pesto, just like what happened with the (now) famous avocado pasta.

A quick google search revealed the bitter truth: mint pesto had already been invented. But still, mint pesto is one of the most delicious things I’ve ever tasted! It’s easy to do and fits perfectly with many fruit desserts. So far, I’ve had it with fresh pineapple, mango, and fruit salad, but it must be great with strawberries, ice cream, and even chocolate cake! In fact, I can’t think of anything that wouldn’t be even better with a bit of mint pesto on top!

This is what you need:

• 15g fresh mint (NOT peppermint!)


• 20g honey or agave syrup


• 25g bleached almonds


• 25g almond/hazelnut/sunflower oil

Place mint leaves, honey, almonds, and oil in your food processor and mix until smooth. Add a bit water if needed. That’s it!

Enjoy!

Kathrinchen - the Gingerbread That Opens the Christmas Season

So a Roman emperor asks you to marry him, and your answer is “No, thanks.” Better think twice! Catherine of Alexandria turned down a marriage proposal coming from the emperor Maxentius in year 305, and guess what happened? Maxentius tried to kill Catherine using a breaking wheel (hence the wheel in this picture) - but didn’t succeed and had her beheaded instead.

In memory of that event the Germans traditionally start their Plätzchen season on the 24th of November, on the eve of St. Catherine’s day, and bake a special form of Lebkuchen, or gingerbread, called Kathrinchen. I only found about this tradition today, but next year I’m definitely going to serve these lemon-scented gingerbread cookies on that day. And bake them a couple of days in advance: these cookies need 4-5 days to get softer and to better reveal their nice lemony taste.

This recipe is again from Feinste Weinachtsbäckerei. I don’t have a proper Kathrinchen cookie cutter, so I used another rectangular cookie cutter, about 4cm wide and 6cm long.

For about 40 of  cookies that size you need:

• 100g honey


• 50g sugar


• 25g butter


• 1 egg yolk


• 30g sugar


• 2 tsp gingerbread spice mixture


• zest of one lemon


• 1 Tbsp rose water


• 1 tsp potash


• 250g all-purpose flour (I baked mine with spelt 1050)


• 1 pinch of salt

Plus for the icing:

• 4 Tbsp sugar


• 2 Tbsp hot water


• 1 Tbsp lemon juice

Place honey, 50g sugar, and butter in a pan and heat until sugar has melted. Mix egg yolk, 30g sugar, spices, and lemon zest together in a baking bowl. Mix potash with rose water and add to the egg-sugar mixture. Now add honey mixture and flour (I added a pinch of salt in the flour, although it wasn’t in the original recipe) and stir with a wooden spoon until all ingredients are well combined. Place the dough in the fridge for one hour or so.

Roll out the dough 0,5cm thick and cut it into rectangular cookies either with a knife or with a cookie cutter. Bake about 15 minutes in a preheated oven (180 C).

Once the cookies have cooled a bit, brush them with lemon-sugar icing (just mix all ingredients together). This makes the cookies sprinkle like they had a bit frost on them!

Greek Christmas Cookies with Orange and Honey

I love cookbooks where every single recipe works. Recipes from My Greek Kitchen written by Rena Salaman is one of those rare books: you choose any recipe and can be sure that the result is perfect. After a Vanillekipferl disaster from the previous days, this was the book I needed now. I chose these traditional Greek Christmas cookies flavoured with orange, honey, cinnamon, and brandy - a heavenly combination!

These cookies are made without eggs and butter, so apart from honey, they’re vegan. For a 100% vegan result, either leave the last step out (they taste great even without), or make a syrup using agave syrup instead.

I made one small change to the recipe, though: instead of walnuts, I used pecans. Walnuts tend to get rancid very easily, whereas pecans keep better, so I rarely buy walnuts.

For about 35 cookies you need:

• 150 ml olive oil


• 95g sugar


• 1 orange - juice and grated zest


• ½ tsp baking soda


• 350g flour (I used spelt 630 this time)


• 1 tsp baking powder


• pinch of salt


• ½ tsp cinnamon


• 4 Tbsp brandy

And for the syrup:

• 150ml water


• 100g sugar


• 250g honey


• 1 tsp cinnamon

• plus some walnuts or pecan nuts, chopped coarsely

Mix olive oil with sugar. Add zest, brandy and baking soda to the juice (it will foam a bit, that’s normal). In a baking bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon, then add oil-sugar mixture and juice mixture. Mix the dough with a wooden spoon until it’s smooth. Then form small balls (mine were 20g or so) with your hands and place them on an oven tray covered with parchment paper. Press them down gently with a fork and bake about 15 minutes in a preheated oven (180 C), or until pale brown.

When your cookies come out of the oven, it’s time to prepare the syrup: combine water, sugar, cinnamon, and honey in a pan and bring to a boil. Let simmer over a low heat for 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Drop a couple of cookies at a time in the syrup (my pan fit 8 or so at a time), let them simmer for 1-2 minutes and then remove with a skimmer onto a plate. Top with crushed nuts while the cookies are still sticky!

These cookies are quite sweet, so they taste great with a strong espresso.

Almond Cake with Lemon and Honey

The other day I had a sudden craving for something with almonds and honey, so I did a quick Google search and found a great recipe in "A Sweet Spoonful". I tried the recipe, and it was great, but then I got an even better idea: I merged that recipe with one of my all-time favourites, Luscious Lemon Cake, and a new winning recipe was born! What I love about this cake is how easy and fast you can make it, how great it tastes, and how well it keeps - well, three days is my maximum, but only because there just hasn't been anything left any more...!

Ingredients:

• 250g butter (or margarine - I nowadays use a mixture a butter and margarine)
• 80 grams (brown) sugar
• 4 eggs (I urge you to use only organic eggs, preferably from a farm you know yourself!)
• 130g flour - I used whole-grain wheat and spelt
• 150g ground almonds
• 2 tsp baking powder
• grated zest and juice of ½ lemon, organic, non-treated
• 1 heaped Tbsp honey

First, set your oven to 190 degrees Celsius. Beat soft butter with sugar until it's pale and smooth. Then add eggs, one by one, and then the lemon zest. Mix together dry ingredients and mix together with the butter-egg-sugar mixture. Pour into a buttered round form (24cm) and bake about 15 minutes, or until golden brown. Turn onto a big plate and while the cake is still warm, sprinkle generously with honey-lemon-juice mixture. Let cool and serve with a dollop of ice-cream or chantilly. If you want, you can decorate the cake with some confectioners' sugar - especially if the surface doesn't look perfect, like often happens to me, at least!