Ciao a tutti!
Il panettone in Italy is a fluffy, light, soft cake usually with raisins, candied fruits like oranges, pistachio, other dried fruits and sometimes chocolate or other flavours. It is a sweet cake and is most often seen around Christmas and New Years time, which is the high season for panettone. Although the supermarkets carry a million non-vegan flavours, there are also plenty of vegan versions around, if you know where to look!
Most often you can find the vegan panettone at a NaturaSi and other health-food or organic shops, or can purchase it online, however online choices are not that great. Agire Ora sells it through their online store, but you have to have an account with them and they deliver only in Italy. Their website is in Italian, so if you are in Italy and speak Italian, this could be a good option for you. The nice thing about buying through Agire Ora is that you are supporting animal rights in Italy. But also, just buying vegan panettone means you are already supporting animal rights! 🙂
You can also find panettone at stands around Italy, usually in the weekend flea-markets. Finding vegan panettone can be a bit more challenging at the flea-markets.
This panettone, is the Dacasto Gran Pasticceria vegan panettone, which has pop-up stands around Italy at the weekend markets. They make both the non-vegan and vegan version for customers.
Dacasto not only serves Italy, but also many other places in Europe. In fact, this one we found also in Germany.
And how does it taste? Delicious! Firstly, the fresh, sweet aroma permeates the entire space around you after opening the cake. It has a very inviting and pleasant smell and texture.
The panettone is made by hand using the finest ingredients. The actual secret is that they use the pasta madre, which is not really able to be translated in English, but it is the original starter dough, or ‘mother’ dough used to make the batches of panettone. This is one of the key ingredients, as there are no additional additives or chemicals in the dough. It also helps it to raise in a natural way, giving the cake its fluffiness and softness. The cake is also very digestible and does not feel heavy in the stomach like some cakes do.
All the ingredients can be seen here.
Our panettone was already half eaten by the time the photo was taken! 🙂
Happy Holiday!
-VegItalyGuide.com
by 