Pomino's Kitchen

Semifreddo al Cassata

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 19:20:19 +0200

Een paar sfeerimpressies, het recept komt wat later.

Pomino's Hazelnut Cupcakes

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:49:29 +0100

Last Christmas we were in New York and came across the Magnolia Bakery at 401 Bleeckerstreet. This is the famous bakery where Carrie and Miranda of the TV series Sex and the City buy their favorite cupcakes. Magnolia uses beautiful pastel colors for the icing on the cupcakes. Not only do they look very pretty, they taste like heaven! So I was inspired to make our own Pomino version. I thought of using the fine taste and smell of Piemontese hazelnuts (tonda gentile) to create an Italian version.

Ingredients (approx. 24 cupcakes)

cupcakes

400 g flour
6 g baking powder
200 g butter (at room temperature)
400 g sugar
50 g hazelnut (preferably Tonda Gentile)
1 vanilla pod
4 large eggs
250 ml milk

hazelnut buttercream

200 g butter (at room temperature)
1.2 kg confectioners' sugar
2 table spoons hazelnut cream (Tonda Gentile)
1 vanilla pod
110 ml milk
1/2 table spoon cocoa

Tools

24 cupcake forms
1 clean plastic bag or piping bag

STEP 1 - prepare the cupcakes

Preheat the oven to 170 C. Now prepare the batter for the cupcakes. Combine the flour and the baking powder and mix well. In another bowl, use an electric mixer to cream the butter until you get a smooth paste. Add the sugar gradually and keep on beating the mixture. Now add the eggs one at a time and mix. Add the flour/baking powder mixture and the milk gradually until all ingredients are incorporated. Scrape out the vailla pods and mix the seeds with the batter. Do not overmix.

Fill the cupcake forms for three quarter and bake for 25 minutes. Cool the cupcakes until they are at room temperature.

STEP 2 - prepare the buttercream

Put the soft butter in a mixing bowl and add the hazelnut cream, 800 g of sugar, the milk and the seeds from the vanilla pod. Beat with an electric mixer until you obtain a smooth mixture, about 5 minutes. Gradually add the remaining sugar and keep on beating until the mixture is thick. To provide a bit of color, add the cocoa powder.

STEP 3 - icing the cupcakes

Fill the piping bag with the buttercream and decorate the cupcakes.

You can keep the cupcakes for three days at room temperature but they are best eaten freshly baked.

An Italian Christmas recipe

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 11:53:09 +0100

Now the days are getting shorter and Christmas time is coming my thoughts go to recipes of nutritious food in which lots of flavours are packed, conserved in such a way that the taste only improves with time. Many of you may know the famous British Christmas pudding that is traditionally prepared months before the Christmas celebration.

Perhaps fewer of you may know that in Italy, in Siena to be precise, they have their own heavenly Christmas cake with honey, spices, nuts and candied fruit: Panforte.

Here, I will present you with my recipe which will go perfectly with either cafè or with a good passito.

Ingredients (for about 8 persons)

225 g peeled almonds
100 g walnuts
50 g hazelnuts (take the Tonda Gentile delle Langhe variety form Piemonte if you can get hold of them, they taste by far the best)
100 g candied orange and/or lemon peel
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon freshly grounded (in a mortar) coriander seeds
¼ teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
¼ teaspoon ground mace
about 100 g flour (preferably Italian 00)
275 g honey (acacia would be fine)
75 g sugar

“Tools”

baking sheets
20 cm diameter springform

For decoration

powder sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Mix with a wooden spoon the nuts and candied orange peel with half of the cinnamon, the coriander, the white pepper and the mace. Add 75 g of the flour.

Pour the honey in a pan, slowly heat it on the stove and dissolve the sugar in the honey. Poor the honey mixture in the bowl containing the nuts and spices. Mix well with the wooden spoon. The mixture should have the consistency of a very sticky paste. It should not be like a thick liquid, in that case you should add some flour.

Now cover the sides and the bottom of the springform with bakingsheet and fill the springform with the mixture. Wet your hands a little bit and push the mixture down in the springform to get rid of large pockets of air. Flatten the surface a bit and coat it with a thin layer of a mix of the remaining flour and cinnamon.

Cook the Panforte for about 35 minutes in an oven preheated at about 180 Celsius. When you take it out of the oven it will still be relatively soft. Open the springform after about 15 minutes and fully cool down the Panforte on a tray for some 8 hours.

If you want to keep the Panforte till Christmas you need to wrap it first in fat-free paper and then in aluminum foil. You can keep it for at least two months.

Before serving the Panforte you dust it with powder sugar. For cutting it you use the largest knife you have and use that as a lever.

Buon Natale!