Annabel Langbein: Christmas baking (+recipes) - NZ Herald (2024)

Practice makes perfect panforte.

In years gone by, when I had a consultancy business and cooking school down in the Axis building in Parnell, the annual creation of Christmas gifts for our clients was legendary. Each year we would select a special treat to make - one year it was little cakes, another we painted beautiful boxes in a kaleidoscope of colours and filled them with delectable homemade chocolate truffles, another year it was Christmas mince pies. And then there was the panforte year, when it all came to a horrible end.

Panforte is a traditional Italian Christmas cake that hails from Siena, laden with nuts and with a consistency that's more like nougat than cake. To my mind it is possibly one of the nicest of homemade Christmas treats (nougat would be the other but it's much harder to get right). Panforte is expensive to make and you need a bit of practice to make it successfully. Mixing hot toffee into large amounts of fruit and nuts, chocolate and spices can be tricky as you have to get the toffee at the right temperature to ensure the panfortes are toothsome and not tooth-breaking - and take care not to get burnt in the process. But the end result transcends almost anything in the way of Christmas sweet treats, worth every inch of the cost and the effort.

Anyway, the wheels for the panforte production were set in motion. The ingredients for 400 of these beautiful cakes were purchased and mixed up in huge containers. In between cooking classes and recipe testing, our panfortes were cooked off in small batches and then, once cooled, hand-wrapped with cellophane and pretty ribbon. They looked amazing and briefly, all too briefly, we were brimming with pride.

Panforte was not new to us, but unfortunately the person doing the measuring was. And for some reason no one realised there was a problem until at the very end of our labours when all the panfortes were wrapped and ribboned, and looking utterly gorgeous piled up on our giant boardroom table (400 panfortes is a lot!).

We all sat down to a glass of wine and a little slice of our hard work. But our delicious panforte was not delicious - it was inedible. The measurer had measured salt, not sugar. We had to turn around and start again. My accountant mutinied, my husband mutinied. After that it was decided that no matter how nice our clients were they would be perfectly happy with a nice bottle of wine.

Panforte

Ready in 1 hour. Serves 20. Makes 1 cake

1 cup almonds, toasted and very coarsely chopped
1 cup hazelnuts, toasted, skins rubbed off and very coarsely chopped
2½ cups (combined amount) of dried fruit, such as mixed peel, raisins and chopped dried figs
2/3 cup plain flour
2 Tbsp cocoa
1 tsp cinnamon
60g dark chocolate, chopped
½ cup honey
½ cup sugar
Icing sugar, to dust

Preheat oven to 150C fanbake and thoroughly grease or line with baking paper a 20cm-diameter springform cake tin. Combine nuts and fruit and mix with flour, cocoa and cinnamon. Boil the honey and sugar in a saucepan until mixture forms a soft ball when a drop is dripped into a cup of cold water. Add chocolate and stir until it is melted and the mixture is smooth. Pour into dry ingredients and quickly mix with a very strong wooden spoon (or your hands) until combined. Press into tin and bake for about 35 minutes or until set. Remove from tin while still warm. When cool, dust liberally with icing sugar. Stored in an airtight container, it will keep for weeks.

Annabel says: It's a good idea to use clean heavy plastic gloves to mix this dense Italian festive fruitcake so you don't burn your hands. You can use different types of fruit and nuts, as long as you keep the quantities constant. They do tend to spread a little when they cook, so just round them up into tight circles with a flat knife after they come out of the oven then leave to set and cool fully before you take them off the baking paper and store them. Panforte is very rich, so serve it in very thin slices.

Speculaas Cookies

Ready in 40 mins + chilling. Makes about 25-30

225g butter
¾ cup soft brown sugar
2 Tbsp milk
1 cup plain flour
1 cup self-raising flour
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
½ tsp ground cloves
¼ tsp ground ginger
A pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 170C fanbake and line 2 baking trays with baking paper. Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in milk, then sift in dry ingredients and mix to form a crumbly dough. Form into a ball, flatten, wrap in baking paper and chill for 1 hour. Place dough on a floured bench, lay a sheet of baking paper on top and roll out thinly. Cut into desired shapes. Transfer on to baking trays and bake until lightly golden (15-20 minutes). If your oven cooks unevenly you may need to turn the trays around halfway through the cooking time to ensure even cooking. Allow biscuits to cool on the tray for 10 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack. Once fully cooled, store in an airtight container for up to two weeks.

Annabel says: Super crispy and richly spiced, these traditional Dutch biscuits were originally made to celebrate Saint Nicholas' Day on December 5. When you buy these biscuits they are often moulded in the shape of windmills or other decorative stamps. I just roll them out thinly and use a cutter to make shapes. To ensure that they cook evenly, make them a similar size and thickness.

Christmas Snowballs

Ready in 40 mins + chilling. Makes 30-36 balls

225g butter, softened but not melted
½ cup icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1¾-2 cups plain flour
½ cup ground walnuts
30-36 dried cherries
Icing sugar, for dusting

Beat butter, icing sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy (about 5 minutes). Add 1¾ cups of flour and walnuts and mix until it comes together into a manageable dough that will hold its shape when rolled into a ball. If dough is very sticky, add a little more flour. Chill for 20-30 minutes. Preheat oven to 145C fanbake. Wrap a heaped teaspoon of the mixture around each dried cherry and roll into a ball. Arrange on an oven tray lined with baking paper and bake until firm but not browned (about 30 minutes). When cool, roll in icing sugar and store in an airtight tin. They will keep for a couple of weeks and also freeze well.

Annabel says: This special recipe was shared with me many years ago by a friend, Jennifer Duncan. It's a Christmas baking tradition from her Eastern European family heritage. Tender and buttery, these lovely cookies, with their tangy cherry filling, are now always part of my Christmas baking repertoire. You could use other fruit, such as chopped dried figs or cranberries. If you can't find ground walnuts, whizz up some whole walnuts in the food processor - just be sure to check that they are fresh first.

• For more great Annabel Langbein recipes see her new summer annual A Free Range Life: Celebrate Summer! (Annabel Langbein Media, $24.95) or visit annabel-langbein.com.