Christmas Baking

There is one Christmas Day ritual which JC has to follow: eating panettone for breakfast.
To fulfill this duty I made Mataloc this year.

Mataloc is a panettone-like bread from the lake Como area in northern Italy.
I used a recipe from "The Italian Baker" by Carol Field. Comparing with the panettone recipe in the same book, they are very similar with maybe little less butter for Mataloc.

I didn’t have a panettone pan so used a cake pan. 

The outcome was ... colossal!

The texture could be similar to brioche than airy panettone but it tasted just like panettone.

I have never had Mataloc. I’ve never even seen it therefore I don’t know if the Mataloc I made had even the slightest resemblance to the original bread, but JC loved it and that’s all that matters, at least for this mission.

For the dessert I made the Black Forest cake.
It is the traditional German cake with Kirschwasser flavor.
Since the Black Forest cake uses whipped cream, not butter cream, it is of course sweet but there is some lightness in its sweetness rather than being heavy or rich.

The sponge cake was soaked with the Kirschwasser syrup and cream was whipped with Kirschwasser, so we had this cake with Kirschwasser.

Cleanliness of the spirit together with the light sweetness of the cake created smooth pairing.

Next day we had this cake with the sparkling wine.

Domaine Collin Crémant de Limoux
This is a rosé sparkling wine from southern France made with a traditional method.
Fresh aromas and flavors of apple, plum and cherry with bitterness of apple skin.

I thought that the bitterness of the wine would collide with the cake but, in fact, with the cake the bitterness disappeared and the wine went good with the cake, especially with the cherry and surprisingly very good with the cream！