Panettone - Individual

FAILSAFE Panettone.  Pear on the left and chocolate on the right. 

I recently asked again on my Real Meals Facebook page if anyone had a special request.  Something they wanted me to try and convert to 'FAILSAFE' and Thermomix-ese.    Vee asked for Panettone which is an Italian sweet bread usually made for Christmas.  It's normally filled with many dried fruits and peels,  like currants, raisins and citrus peel.  Stuff we can't eat while FAILSAFE.

So,  I googled.  And I came up with quite a few recipes,  most of them claiming to be "the authentic" one.  :)  Reading these recipes I realised that every Italian family has their own idea of what is 'authentic'...  the main criterion being "it came from Nonni".   

I am not going to claim this to be 'authentic',  but I think the intention is clear.  This is "Failsafe Panettone" and these can sit proudly at any Christmas table.  Or pre-Christmas get-together.  Or end-of-year gathering.  Or...  crikey...  a birthday party!!  (Waves to the December birthday peeps)

The recipe I finally settled on was actually for individual Panettones and wasn't too complicated.  You should visit this site for the non-Thermomix instructions to go with my ingredients. 

...With Love and Cake Individual Panettones in Tin Cans!!!

I only have tins cans that have been plasticised inside.  I'm not rapt with this idea,  so I am going to do cupcake holders.  This will mean even smaller buns,  but we'll see how that turns out.  If you have tin cans, or indeed, a proper Panettone tin,  then follow the instructions at the above link. The Citric Acid is added because the original recipe uses lemon rind,  which we can't have.  You can leave it out if you're not happy to use that additive. 

With an Australian accent,  this is pronounced "Pa-nuh-TOE-nee".
Total 'rising' time about 3 hours. 

INGREDIENTS:

• 80g Milk
• 1 tsp (5g) Caster Sugar
• 3 tsp (about 13g) instant Yeast

• 100g butter, room temp
• 50g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 400g Bakers' (strong) Flour 
• 1 tsp Citric Acid (opt)
• 1 tsp Salt
• 180g diced Dried Pear

METHOD:

• Prepare a warm spot,  eg your oven on 50ºC for 5 minutes and turn off
• Place Milk into a glass jug or similar and microwave for 20secs so it's warm
• Add Caster Sugar and stir to dissolve
• Add Yeast by sprinkling on top and give it a gentle stir
• Set aside Yeast mixture 
• Put Butterfly into Thermomix bowl
• Add Butter and Caster Sugar 
• Mix at speed 3-4 until it is soft and pale and fluffy  (This is small amount for TMX to handle,  so you may need to stop and scrape down a few times.) About 20-30 seconds.
• Remove butterfly, close lid and turn on Thermomix to speed 3
• Add Eggs, one at a time through the lid while it mixes, about 15 seconds
• Scrape down and gently pour in the Yeast mixture
• Add all of the Flour, Citric Acid and the Salt
• Knead for 2 minutes
• While it's kneading,  prepare a bowl for it to rise in (you can leave it in the Thermomix,  but I don't have a second bowl so I use a mixing bowl) and a clean damp tea-towel
• After the knead,  dump mixture into a bowl - this is a sticky dough,  so you can use the 'scraping it out with a spatula' method or,  the one I've just learned, the 'invert TMX, unlock base and allow dough and blades to drop from bowl' method.  I quite like this one.
• Allow this to rise in a warm spot,  covered with the damp tea-towel, for one and a half to two hours.  
• Prepare your cupcake cases.  I'm using 18 cardboard ones where you don't need a muffin tray
• Punch it down in the mixing bowl by folding in the mixing bowl with a large spatula
• Add the Dried Fruit and fold, fold, fold until it's well combined (or choc chips,  see Tweeks)
• Divide the dough amongst the cupcake cases, filling them 2/3 full, by just tearing a handful off the dough, rolling it and dropping them in.  Even though the dough is sticky, it rolls off the skin very easily
• Cover again with the damp tea towel (I used a cooling rack set up over the top of them to hold up the tea towel) and allow to rise again to the top of the cases.  (1 hour)
• Pre-heat oven to 190ºC fan-forced
• Bake on the tray for 10 minutes.

Verdict  Yum!  Lovely bready-cakey thing.  It's not bread but then it's not cake either.  You can have it buttered, too. 

Tweeks  I only had 90grams of dried pear (that was 3 whole pears, dried in my my cheap Aldi dehydrator) so I decided to do 1/2 fruit and the other half chocolate-chip!!!  What a treat!!! 

Option 2 - using a lined ring tin,  drop 7-8 balls around  tin.
Bake about 30-40 minutes