If you’re looking for an alternative to Christmas cake (or an addition to it), then panforte is the bake for you. Sufficiently similar to our traditional Christmas cake in its flavours of Medieval spice, dried fruit and candied citrus that it can’t fail to evoke the Christmas spirit, it is still entirely distinctive. Panforte is shallower than Christmas cake, and more solid; the honey in the mix means that it is chewy rather than crumbly, and where a Christmas cake is stuffed full of vine fruits and cherries, panforte majors in dates and figs. A slim wedge of the dense, spiced bake is more than sufficient and even, whisper it, more elegant than our homegrown Christmas cake.
Appropriately, given its provenance, its flavours and chewiness are reminiscent of a florentine: the cake comes from Siena, Florence’s neighbour, and is an old Tuscan cake which probably began life as a spiced bread.
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