For Italians, nothing quite says Christmas like panettone. Baked until golden, deliciously sweet and fragrant with spices, it has all the festive flavours one could wish for.
Our panettone recipe, from Hotel Amigo’s BoCConi Restaurant, is given a wonderfully Flemish twist when served with a delicious speculoos cream. A caramelized, spiced biscuit, speculoos are much-loved seasonal treats, and this combination creates the perfect centrepiece for a Christmas afternoon tea.
Ingredients
For the Panettone:
70g sugar
40 ml water
4 egg yolks
90g butter
90g panettone flour
40g yeast
40g plain flour
Pinch of salt
80g dried grapes
40g candied oranges
For the speculoos cream:
50g gianduja spread
25g speculoos biscuits
Method
Place the panettone flour, salt, 30g sugar, yeast, water and 2 egg yolks in a bowl and mix
Chill for 2 hours
Once chilled, place the mixture in the bowl of a free-standing mixer fitted with a dough hook
Add in the plain flour, remaining sugar, pinch of salt, 2 egg yolks, 60g butter and dried fruits and mix until you reach a dough consistency
Cover and chill for one hour
Place the chilled dough in a paper panettone mould and chill for a further 6 hours, until the dough is risen
Preheat your oven to 175o C. Add a little butter on top of the panettone and bake in the oven for 35 minutes
Once golden and cooked, prick the panettone and allow to cool upside down for 12 hours
Place in the oven for 35 minutes at 175° C (static baking)
To make the speculoos cream, simply blend your Speculoos biscuits with the gianduja until you have a creamy consistency. Serve the panettone with the Speculoos cream on top and enjoy.
Sample BoCConi’s sensational Italian dishes at Hotel Amigo. For reservations please call +32 2 547 47 15 or email ristorantebocconi@roccofortehotels.com.
To understand Baroque, you have to understand its ambition. To fully appreciate it, you have to go to southern Italy. Emerging from the Counter-Reformation in early 17th-century Italy, the movement harnessed drama, ornamentation and light in service of devotion – art designed to engage the senses as much as the intellect.
Some travellers fall in love with a city all at once. Others come to know it gradually, season by season, until they understand not just where to go, but, perhaps more vitally, when. London, with its Royal parks and cobbled courtyards, layers of heritage and history, rewards the latter handsomely.
Belgium does not apologise for its obsessions. In a country that has elevated brewing, architecture and surrealism to the level of national philosophy, chocolate occupies its own distinct place: something closer to culture than craft, as central to the country's identity as its quirky humour. To understand this is to understand Brussels itself.
