Panettone

Panettone is one of my favorite things about holidays. I'd say Christmas, but it always seems like we eat Panettone for Easter too. But honestly, it's so yummy that I'd be ok eating it all of the time. Panettone is a light brioche bread that has raisins, citron, and other sweetened dried fruits in it. I know that it sounds a lot like fruitcake, but I can promise you that it's nothing like fruit cake. While fruitcake is extremely dense, dry, and often could be used as bricks, panettone is a large version of a fruit studded brioche. Toasted panettone is one of my favorite things ever. Now you definitely have to be careful and make sure that it doesn't catch on fire, but after a nice even toasting, the crispy outsides are just to die for.

Unfortunately, this isn't a quick and easy tasty treat to make. Here's one example of a great homemade panettone recipe. I didn't have time for this crazy recipe this week, so I went to Il Fornaio who makes fabulous Italian pastries. All in all, a very tasty dessert night.

Pumpkin Pie and Pumpkin Bread

It's finally starting to feel like fall out in San Francisco. This weekend we're having our second rain of the entire year which isn't really all that bad, but it does make you want to enjoy more wintry foods. I checked out ChuThis's brussel sprouts, which were totally amazing and really only took about 15 mins to do which is great. In the stores, in addition to seeing brussel sprouts, squashes have started to enter the produce department with their great colors, shapes and variety of sizes. I have loved basic baked butternut squash so much that I thought I should make some sort of a squash related dessert. Thus, this week, it was everything pumpkin.

I had some pumpkin leftover from a Mystery Box a while back and wanted to see if it made different tasting pie filling than the plain old canned pumpkin that I usually use. I'm sorry to report that it really didn't taste that much different for the additional couple of hours work required to make my own canned pumpkin.

For my pie, I used the pie recipe that I've been using for years from the back of the Libby's canned pumpkin, except I substituted my pumpkin puree. It turned out tasting just as great as the usual pie recipe.

Also, I thought I'd try a new tasty pumpkin treat. I saw a fun and easy recipe for Pumpkin Bread on Cookie Madness the other day and thought I'd give it a shot. The recipe called for pumpkin pie spice and I was not aware of any such spice so I substituted the same spices in the Libby pie recipe. Here's the modified recipe below.

Pumpkin Bread (modified from the Cookie Madness recipe)

1 3/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup canned pumpkin
1/3 cup water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9×5 inch metal loaf pan or spray with cooking spray.

Stir together flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, ginger, cloves, and cinnamon. Set aside.

Whisk together oil, sugar, eggs, vanilla, pumpkin, and water in a mixing bowl. Add the flour mixture and stir just until moistened.

Transfer mixture to loaf pan and bake for 1 hour or until done. (I think that mine probably took a bit more like 1 hour and 15 mins but you want to keep a close eye on it.)

The thing that I really liked most about this recipe is that it was really fast. I think my prep time on the whole first loaf was only 15 mins and it was so tasty that I made 2 more loaves.

Sorry for no pictures this time around. I've been really bad about forgetting to take pictures of the desserts that I've made lately. Next week, I will do better. I promise.