Panforte is a Christmas cake of the Sienese tradition, with a thousand-year history. The ingredients include dried fruit, candied fruit, spices, flour and honey. It is then baked in the oven on a wafer sheet and dusted with vanilla icing sugar. The texture of panforte is soft and doughy, the taste is very sweet and varied with notes of candied fruit and spices. The Panforte of Siena is known as a specialty all over the world and there are several varieties including panpepato, with the addition of pepper, chocolate panforte and white panforte or margherita panforte, so called in honor of Queen Margherita of Savoy, which differs from the others in that it is covered with a layer of vanilla icing sugar. In this recipe of ours we will tell you how to prepare panforte at home step by step, with photos, advice and suggestions to obtain a dessert as good as in the best artisan workshops!

Preparation

1

Cut out a sheet of parchment paper and a sheet of wafer, using them to line a 22 cm cake tin.

2

Toast the almonds in a preheated static oven at 180° for 10 minutes, then remove from the oven and keep warm. Meanwhile, mix the spices in a bowl.

3

Pour the flour into a bowl, add the spices and mix.

4

Add the dried fruit to the candied fruit and mix thoroughly.

5

Pour the honey and sugar into a thick-bottomed saucepan, bring to the boil over low heat.

6

Using a kitchen thermometer, measure the temperature of the honey and sugar syrup, which must reach 121°. Stir the mixture from time to time.

7

Pour the hot syrup into the fruit and mix quickly with a wooden spoon. In the meantime, turn on the oven at 180° in static mode, to preheat it.

8

Immediately pour the mixture into the mould, level it and add 20g of icing sugar.

9

Bake at 180° in a static oven for 30 minutes. Then take it out of the oven and let it cool well, finally sprinkling with the remaining icing sugar.

Advice and tips

The gingerbread it is kept wrapped in aluminum foilso it stays soft, up to 2 weeks.

Coriander is a spice that we have added to our taste, but you can avoid it if you don’t like it or if you can’t find it on sale easily.

The wafer sheet is important because it prevents sugar and honey from dispersingso as to keep the base very soft.

You can find wafers at the supermarket and in specialized shops for the supply of pastry items.

You can prepare panforte in a small version to give to friends and relatives for Christmas!

History

The black panforte was a preparation widespread in the city of Siena, of exclusively noble prerogative due to the very high cost of the ingredients. The preparation of the cake was reserved to the guild of doctors and apothecaries of Siena, which resold it to the rich and the clergy. Siena was located on the passage of the Via Francigena and there was thus a strong spice trade in the city. Panforte as we know it now was the result of a modification of the original recipe by an apothecary who, on the occasion of a visit to the Queen Margaret in 1879, he decided to replace the black pepper with vanilla sugar, to add honey and to eliminate the melon from the candied fruit. In 2013, panforte di Siena became a PGI product.