PANPAPATO - ITALIAN CHRISTMAS CAKE

After a ski trip from which I will never recover and one Christmas party too many, I am very much looking forward to going home and stuffing my face with Christmas cakes of every origin and kind.

This one I’m sharing with you today (metaphorically sharing. Soz) is from Ferrara in the North of Italy. It’s called Panpapato (it’s the funniest name and it always takes me a good five minutes to spell it properly without adding extra pa’s in it. HA) and it’s full of nuts and yummy things and so rich and the most delicious. In fact, my dad posted a homemade one to me about a month ago because I couldn’t wait until Christmas. Miss impatient. Now I’m not saying this is better than my dad’s because my dad is the cake master but what you can do is make this one and then ask your dad to make another one and post it to you and you eat them both and happy days.

BOOZY MARZIPAN LOAF CAKE

If last week was coffee week, it really does look like the theme of this week that’s just passed is booze. Or maybe the four glasses of complimentary mulled wine I got given at the hairdresser’s today are making me talk nonsense. Either way, this is a very delicious moist almond-y marzipan-y loaf cake that is soaked in lovely spiced rum from a pretty bottle. Why not, “It’s Christmas” after all (?).

TREACLE TART

You spend the week drinking an average of 7.5 cups of coffee per day and you sleep 0.5 hours per night and have coffee cake for dinner and carry half your bathroom and wardrobe from home to arse-end of the universe and then to work and then to the centre and then back, then the weekend comes and you kind of hold right to the biggest slice of treacle tart you can possibly imagine with a mountain of vegan clotted cream on the side. Fill your tummy and smile and happy Monday.

TURKISH DELIGHT CAKE

Back from my beloved Birmingham with my belly full of vegan brownies and ice cream and apple crumble I stop by the Turkish supermarket and get a box of rose Turkish Delight to munch on the way home (about half a minute away. But I can eat several hundreds kilos of Turkish Delight in half a minute, you should know). The rest goes on this pretty cake, for Amber's birthday. It is. Good.

VANILLA & POMEGRANATE BAKED DOUGHNUTS

Belle and Sebastian, boots and baked doughnuts this week (and alliteration).
Make these, you're in for a treat.

ROSE PANNA COTTA

A very yummy dessert to keep the spirit of spring alive in you whilst the North Pole has come to visit (go home, North Pole) and to try and help digest the kilos of pumpkin brownies and toffee apple pies scoffed down earlier this week. Thank you rose water panna cotta, you're so nice to me unlike the North Pole who has been making my feet so cold.

TOFFEE APPLE HAND PIES

These yummy little things here have caused a bit of a conundrum, in that I didn’t know what they were. Well, I knew what they were, but I basically had to set up a plebiscite to decide what they were called.

It all goes back to last weekend when I went to this organic grocery store just around the corner from my house and got this toffee apple cake from their café. Well it was dry like a desert but the flavours were reeeeally good and cinnamony and very autumny. So I thought I’d bake something equally as autumny because it’s quite in fashion at the moment (heh), minus the I’m-eating-clay feel. And I went down the pastry route for some nice buttery flakiness. The buttery pastry nature of them would make me call them pasties, but as several interviewees pointed out, pasties are savoury and savoury only. Also they are kind of just like apple turnovers, however turnovers are triangular and these look much cuter right? So my very good friend Google came to help and it turns out these are a thing in America. These are called pies even though the pies I know look more like a wheel-shaped block of pig. But they are called pies the other side of the pond and they’re so little and cute and you eat them with your hands so there you go, hand pies. A Bonfire-night-meets-Halloween treat, I’m that international. For all my international fans (?) to enjoy.