Pandoro di Verona

At our Christmas Eve Christmas dinner I was presented with this. I confess my heart sank - oh god I thought - more panettone, but then I looked again and I saw that it was not panettone. I also confess to being stupid and thinking it was a product called Paluani but I now know that this is in fact the name of the producer. The product is Pandora di Verona. Which translated means golden bread of Verona. And I do think they only make it in Verona.

I have now looked into it of course. Well I couldn't resist and found that is rather like panettone but made in a particular star shaped mould and it doesn't contain any of the fruit, candied peel and nuts that are in panettone. It can be cut in wedges as shown on the packet but also across so that you get a star shape. Nowadays they sometimes fill it with custard and other such things I believe.

The star-shaped mould was designed by a Veronese painter, way back when called Angelo dall'Oca Bianca. I think the idea was to reference the Christmas star. So tonight, because we have our grandsons back from Sydney for the grand present giving, and a non-traditional dinner of meatballs, I shall stick to the Italian theme with a slice of the star shaped cake surrounded by Jenny's tiny chocolate muffins with chocolate sauce over the lot and cream to go with it.

And it is rightly called bread because it's got yeast in it - and butter and flour and egg yolks. Oh and sugar I guess. But I think that's basically it. Well that's the ingredients. The method is another thing and is probably a secret.

Back in 1894 one Signor Malagatti patented the method/recipe and his factory has been making it ever since. However, this year the company ran into financial trouble and had to be bailed out at the last minute to produce a batch for Christmas. The workers hadn't been paid for ages, which was part of the trouble, but even so they worked for free apparently in the hope of keeping it a going concern. Presumably also in the hope that they sold enough to be paid eventually.

I don't quite understand how anyone else can make it if Malagatti has the patent, but then I guess the other manufacturers such as Paluani must have their own secret ingredients.

If you serve the thing as a whole cake you are supposed to sprinkle icing sugar on top to make it look like a mountain.