Italian Class +
Presentation….
= Time to Bake!
For Italian class my friend and I had to do a presentation and decided to do it on this ancient Italian dessert, Panforte! AKA strong bread, named for its use complex of spices, nuts and candied fruit. Unfortunately Trader Joes AND Whole Foods did not have candied orange or lemon peel! I could have made my own but we just bought an assortment of candied fruit, mango, papaya, cranberries, pineapple...not exactly Italian but hey it turned our pretty well. I'm not going to lie though I do prefer it with the candied orange and lemon, its a bit zestier. So besides that I added some orange zest but other wise followed this recipe http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/panforte-recipe by someone named kingarthur?? Originally I was intending to make the chocolate version...but we got a bit excited and forgot to do all the chocolate part! Ecco qua, panforte bionda (translation here you go, blond strong bread).
Despite the confusion however, it turned out really well! I really like the toasted hazelnuts. I will try to make this in the future...but with chocolate, candied orange and lemon peel, and maybe with more cake "stuff"...this is mostly nuts and candied fruit stuck together with honey but hey thats good too!
I do think we will get an A for this...I believe I'm on to something with this cooking for presentations...not sure how it would go over in my history class but maybe ill give my TA a piece of Panforte next time I hand in an essay....