We did these last year, before we had a mixer, and Soph spent hours with a hand whisk reverse creaming the butter into the flour cube by cube… No such issues this year with the mixer!

The recipe comes from delicious. However we replaced the orange flour water and vanilla extract with proper panettone flavouring: Fiori de Sicilia.

The dough up with wet and dry ingredients before the butter is working in one or two pieces at a time. Once that’s finished you should have a lovely rich, stretchy dough.

That proves for a couple of hours until it doubles in size, then it’s back in the mixer to knead in the dried fruit. The mixture is then split into 8 pieces and popped in tin cans that have been cleaned, and lined with baking parchment. Then they rise for an hour or so before baking in the tins.

After baking they come out of the pots, get glazed, and cool. Once cool they get popped back in the tins and decorated for presentation.

OK not all of them made it to presentation, some had to be ‘tested’. Quite a few in fact! They are lovely and light and have that wonderful authentic taste from the Fiori de Sicilia.