Cake for breakfast
I’ve been very lazy this Christmas. Today I’m going to brine the turkey, and tomorrow I will cook it. But I haven’t made anything else. Compare this to last year, when I cured and smoked ten kilograms of pigs’ leg as well as smoked a turkey.
I fully intended to make another (smaller) ham this year, but before I realised it was December 18, and it takes at least seven days to properly cure a ham in brine. So that’s just poor time management (awareness?). Sadly, I lacked the willpower to forgo a ham entirely, and bought a tiny little on-the-bone number for about $25, just to tide us over until after Christmas, when I’ll go shopping for post-Christmas ham bargains. Woohoo!
I had other big plans. I was going to make panettone this year. But again, it’s way too late.
I only started eating panettone a couple of years ago. We’ve always bought them fairly randomly, usually whatever looked good at Piedemonte’s, generally with fruit or chocolate fillings, or even, one year, a solid chocolate coating. One year Dora the cat went crazy for panettone we’d brought home, but ever since she’s refused to touch them. So I don’t know what was in that panettone that the rest lack.
This year I went with a plain Perugina Pandoro (like a panettone without the fruit, so kind of like a brioche), which my friend Placido at the Preston Market recommended. I think that without the other flavourings you get to appreciate the texture and taste of the cake better. I guess the acid test for me is that Luffy still likes it, and he’s usually unreceptive to plain baked goods. But then he tends to like anything Italian, from parmesan reggiano to cannoli.
After Christmas is when you get the deals, of course, and even stale panettone makes a good bread-and-butter pudding. Or toasted with coffee for breakfast, maybe with berries and marscapone cheese. There’s just something magical about eating cake for breakfast, and while I’d be happy to eat panettone year-round, I guess it makes Christmas a little more fun.
