Dec
23
Christmas tends to fill me with a degree of dread, finding presents for people who don't need anything or for people who need everything. Trying to avoid buying into the consumer horror that the shops become this time of year.After a couple of tight years i've started to get on the home-made bandwagon.
My earlier attempts weren't so successful - over baked ginger biscuits, leaking jars of preserved lemons...
Having Mr Blue-eyes on board does help as he is a real doer and very handy in the kitchen (his snags to come) and with a sewing machine.
So inspired by our time in Tuscany where we sampled many varieties of Siennese panforte we've been baking slabs of Panforte this week. Of course there are as many different recipes as there are churches in Italy but in the end i went with the ever reliable AWW
It has been a good recipe that allows for variation in the fruits and nuts and our 3 batches and included moist figs, glace ginger and craisins. A trip to The Essential Ingredient was a must for rice paper and a digital sugar thermometre as i was not heating sugar without one.
So we baked them low and slow, chilled them in the fridge and now they're ready for carving up and wrapping in recycled scrap booking paper.
oh yum ! they look lovely