Panettone

Every Christmas for as long as I can remember my parents have bought a panettone for my grandparents to eat when they were here visiting us for the holiday. Until this year, however, I’d never tried panettone because my parents had always told me that the store-bought stuff is gross, stale, and generally not worth eating. This year, however, I made panettone for my grandmother. I tried it and I was pleasantly surprised only because I’ve never really heard anything positive about panettone.

I used golden raisin, dried cranberries, and dried apricots in my panettone, but you could make a more tropical version using pineapple, mango, and papaya; you could really go crazy with dried fruit combinations.

My orange zest was really moist, I’m not sure why, but it really didn’t adversely effect the recipe. In fact, it might have been a good thing, because I didn’t use the 1/8 tsp of orange oil that the recipe called for. The only problem I did have was that the fruit on the outside got a bit burnt, probably because of the high sugar content. I did cover the panettone with foil after about 25 minutes, but the fruit was already burnt.

Panettone
Adapted from King Arthur Flour

Ingredients

Biga (Overnight Starter)
3/4 cup (3 1/8 ounces) All-Purpose Flour
1/16 teaspoon yeast (just a pinch)
1/3 cup (2 5/8 ounces) water

Dough
all of the biga (above)
2 1/4 cups (9 1/2 ounces) All-Purpose Flour
1/4 cup (2 ounces) water
2 large eggs
1/4 cup (1/2 stick, 2 ounces) unsalted butter
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/4 teaspoons yeast
1/3 cup (2 1/4 ounces) sugar
2/3 cup golden raisins
2/3 cup slivered dried apricots
2/3 cup dried cranberries
2 tablespoons orange zest

Method
The Biga: Combine the biga ingredients in a medium-sized mixing bowl, cover, and allow them to rest overnight (8 to 12 hours) at room temperature.

Dough: Combine all of the dough ingredients except the fruit, and mix and knead them together—by hand, mixer or bread machine—till you’ve made a soft, smooth dough. Allow the dough to rise, covered, for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, or until it’s puffy (though not necessarily doubled in bulk). Gently deflate the dough, and knead in the fruits.

Shape the dough into a ball and shape into a free-form ring on a well-buttered cookie sheet (you can use a ring pan if you have one). Cover the ring or pan and let the dough rise about 1 hour, using a buttered drinking glass to keep the free-form ring open if need be.

Bake the bread in a preheated 400°F oven for 10 minutes; reduce the oven heat to 375°F and bake an additional 10 minutes; then reduce the heat to 350°F and bake for 15 minutes (for a free-form ring), tenting with aluminum foil if the crust appears to be browning too quickly. Remove the panettone from the oven and cool completely.

Torta Mil Hojas

Torta Mil Hojas (Cake of 1,000 Sheets) is an amazing Chilean cake that is a real labor of love. Each layer has dulce de leche, and in the case of this cake, whipped cream in between each layer. The recipe makes ten layers, but I only had enough dulce de leche to use 6 layers.

Each ball of dough was somewhere in size between a golf ball and a tennis ball and was pretty easily rolled into a 9-inch circle. However, I had to bake each of these layers individually, so it took about 2 hours and turned into a real labor of love. For this reason I probably won’t ever make this cake again. While in Chile I never witnessed a homemade version of this cake (only bakery-produced) and now I know why.

If you are feeling brave and have lots of time, this is an absolutely amazing dessert that will really wow your guests. My cake made ten servings, but I think my rounds ended up being a bit smaller than the 9-inches recommended in the recipe.

Torta Mil Hojas
Adapted from All Recipes

Ingredients
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
7/8 cup butter
3 egg yolks
1 cup milk

2 (14 ounce) cans sweetened condensed milk
1 pint whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp powdered sugar

Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Mix together the flour and baking powder; set aside.
In a large bowl, beat the butter until creamy. Blend in the egg yolks, one at a time. Beat in the flour mixture alternately with the milk. The dough will be stiff like a cookie dough. Divide the dough into 10 pieces and shape into balls. Roll each ball into a 9 inch circle. Place on cookie sheets and prick with a fork in several places.

Bake in the preheated oven for 10 to 12 minutes, or until golden brown. Set aside to cool fully, from 10 minutes up to over night.

Make the Caramel Filling: In a sauce pan, boil the unopened cans of sweetened condensed milk for 3 hours. Monitor the water closely, to make sure there is always water in the pan. Remove can from heat and let cool for 10 to 15 minutes.

Assemble cake about 2 hours before serving. First, whip cream until soft peaks form. Add vanilla and powdered sugar, then beat until slightly firmer than normal whipped cream. Take first layer, spread first with dulce de leche and then whipped cream, continue stacking and layering until all layers (or all filling) are (is) used. Place cake in refrigerator, remove immediately before serving.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas (and Happy Hanukkah)! May you and your families have a joyous holiday filled with togetherness and (of course) delicious food and drink!

Also, I have a preview for you! Here are all the recipes I have laying in wait to be blogged about:

Panettone

Meatballs

Chicken liver pate

Torta mil hojas (an amazing Chilean cake)

So, lots to look forward to here at Kitchen Life, hope to see you here in the New Year!

Caramelized Bacon

Let me preface this entry by saying that I had nothing to do with this recipe, in fact, I hate bacon. However, my mom loves my dad, so she made this for him (and a cocktail party they were having) and he was as happy as a clam.

It’s an incredibly simple recipe that you can use to please any bacon lover in your life, even people who are ambivalent to bacon will love it. Those who hate bacon, however, will run in the opposite direction. When my brother tried it he was so overwhelmed that all he could say was “Oh my God!” over and over again.

A few notes about this recipe:
1) It calls for 1 lb of brown sugar, we probably only used about 2/3 of it. Feel free to dump the sugar into a bowl as you go in order to reduce waste.
2) We couldn’t find any butchers that had offered custom-sliced bacon, so we bought the thickest stuff we could find (Hormel Premium, if I remember correctly), but it still wasn’t thick enough. To remedy this my mom sandwiched 2 pieces of bacon together using the brown sugar as glue, which worked wonderfully.
3) We found that the bacon requires quite a bit more baking time than the recipe recommends, stick to the 8-13 minutes per side and just flip it as many times as needed until it looks done. It will need time to dry after you take it out of the oven, so don’t fear if it’s not crispy.

Caramelized Bacon
Found in the New York Times by my dad

You can make this up to 3 days in advance. Keep in a tightly sealed container at room temperature.

1 pound bacon
1 1-pound box light brown sugar (about 2 1/4 cups).

1. Go to a butcher and spend as much money as you have on very good bacon. Cut it into medium-thick slices, say, 3/16 of an inch.

2. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a large, rimmed cookie sheet with parchment paper. Dump a box of brown sugar into a big bowl. Light brown sugar is best, but if you want to use dark brown, I won’t stop you. Add 1/4 cup of water, so that the sugar becomes more than damp but less than soupy. Some bacon caramelizers add a dash of cayenne pepper, but it all depends on personal preference. Another way to add some kick would be to use pepper-crusted bacon.

3. Dredge the bacon in the sugar, one slice at a time. If the sugar isn’t sticking to the bacon, add some more water a teaspoon at a time until it sticks. (By the way, you won’t use all of the sugar, but it’s good to have extra.) Place the bacon strips on the paper. I then smear some sugar on top of the bacon, on the theory that if a little sweet is good, more is better.

4. Place the bacon in the oven. It’s impossible for me to tell you how long to cook the bacon because it depends on whether you like it chewy or crispy, but trust me, if I ate bacon I would want it to be crispy. Some recipes tell you to keep it in the oven for 8 to 13 minutes per side, depending on the thickness of the bacon. I keep it in on the longer side. You should take yours out when it resembles the kind of bacon you would like to eat. Cut it into roughly 1 1/2-inch triangles. Serve at room temperature. Serves 8 to 10.