Traditional panforte (spicy tuscan christmas cake)
Cakes
This is a recipe for Sienese panforte, a rich, flat cake with medieval roots. It's made dense with whole nuts, fistfuls of spices, and candied fruit. It’s the perfect thing to allow yourself a sliver of in the late afternoon on a cold day when you need a pick me up and a zing of spices to flush your cheeks. It makes a great Christmas treat, both as a beautiful handmade gift and also served in a thin wedge at the end of a long meal. It also happens to be one of the easiest cakes in the world to make. It's traditionally made with a LOT of candied fruit—I strongly recommend if you like to make your own to use that, or to buy artisan candied fruit for this. Otherwise, you can try substituting a portion of the candied fruit for finely chopped dried figs for a nice alternative (thank you, Nigella, for this idea) when you can't get really good candied fruit. This cake lasts weeks. You can wrap slices in greaseproof paper, tie with string and hand them out as edible gifts too. This recipe is inspired by a very traditional panforte recipe from Paolo Petroni's cookbook, "Il Grande Libro della Vera Cucina Toscana."
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