In Carol’s honour
Recipe #148: zuccotto di pandoro al gelato (ice cream cake).
Which is your favourite Carol?
For me it’s gotta be Vorderman. Leave Baskin with her tigers and Kirkwood with her weather reports. Vorderman knows her numbers.
In Carol’s honour, this week we’re solving the countdown conundrum of Christmas Day dessert with a recipe for zuccotto di pandoro al gelato (ice cream cake).
It’s a bit of a statement piece that looks like it takes a lot of time and effort BUT is actually incredibly easy to do. You can make it in 15 mins and prepare it days in advance. Simple, stress-free, sweet. Just as Carol would want.
This week’s album: Good Lies by Overmono
Overmono are two brothers, Ed and Tom Russell, from Wales. They started out separately then came together as a duo in 2015. This is their debut studio album which came out this year. It has a great mix of tunes, blending their edgier underground roots with a more mainstream pop sound. ‘Good lies’, ‘So U Kno’ and ‘Is U’ are highlights.
Two Italian sweethearts
You know gelato, so a little explainer on the two newbies this week: pandoro and zuccotto.
Pandoro is a traditional Italian Christmas sweet bread. It’s like a kids version of panettone, and is the perfect present to give a family member who has no personality. No dried fruit or candied nuts, just a super light and fluffy brioche-style sponge enriched with eggs, butter and sugar.
Always made in the shape of a towering star, traditionally pandoro is sold with a sachet of icing sugar. You add this sugar to the bag the pandoro comes in, hold the top tight, and shake to disperse the sugar. What you end up with is meant to resemble the Italian alps covered in snow at Christmas time. Everyone say ahhh.
Ahhh.
Zuccotto is another traditional desert that hails from Florence. It’s usually made with a sponge cake, a Tuscan liqueur, and ice cream. The name - meaning ‘little pumpkin’ - comes from the specific type of pumpkin-shaped domed-mould it's made in. Obviously very few people have this mould, but any old mixing bowl does the trick.
This week we’re going to merge pandoro and zuccotto to make an ice cream cake which is almost embarrassingly easy to do, but is guaranteed to make everyone happy. And if not happy, certainly hyper.
I used three different flavours of ice cream (vanilla, chocolate and salted caramel) but the choice is completely yours. You can also use as many or as few flavours as you wish.
What you need
The below serves 10-12. It takes 15 mins to prep (plus 2 hours of freezing time) and ZERO mins to cook.
1 pandoro (found in most supermarkets/delis)
3 460ml tubs of ice cream/gelato
Icing sugar (usually provided with the pandoro)
Optional: 4 tbsps of alcohol such as dessert wine, rum, Disaronno, fruit liqueur etc.
Ready, steady, cook
1. Remove your ice cream or gelato from the freezer. Line a 20-25cm mixing bowl with cling film, ensuring all parts of it are covered.
2. Slice the pandoro horizontally into inch-thick slices.
3. Take the biggest slice and lay it into the bottom of the bowl. This will create a star-shaped top to the zuccotto. Reserve the bottom circular piece for finishing the zucotto.
4. Take your next biggest star-shaped slices and cut them in half. Line the sides of the bowl with them, trying as much as possible to interlock the points. Use the smaller slices to then fill any remaining gaps until you have a complete dome of pandoro.
5. If you're adding some festive booze, now’s your moment… You can either brush it on carefully or just put your thumb over the top of the bottle and be liberal with the dousing.
6. The ice cream should be soft by now. Take the first flavour and spread it evenly into the bottom of the dome. You want the ice cream to be pretty soft so that you don't squash the pandoro by spreading it too hard. Repeat the process with the remaining ice cream.
7. Finally, add the reserved circular slice and push gently into the ice cream. Add some extra booze if you want. Cover with cling film and freeze for at least 2 hours.
8. To serve, remove from the freezer and allow to sit for 10 mins so that the pandoro defrosts. Flip it (see above pic) and dust with icing sugar. Cut into slices, grab a spoon, go wild.
Final thought
You can eat any leftover pandoro slices as they are, or you could try using them to make an incredible French toast for a cracking Christmas Day breakfast.
Enjoy the festivities and speak again on the final Friday of the year (29th) for one last recipe of 2023.
Fraser