I am planning on making a Simnel cake for Easter this year, but if you fancy something different, I was sent the most delicious Easter cake to sample.
It is a pistachio panettone-style cake hand made in Sicily.
Information from the Artimondo:
Colomba pasquale or colomba di Pasqua (“Easter Dove” in English) is an Italian traditional Easter cake, the counterpart of the two well-known Italian Christmas desserts, panettone and pandoro.
The dough for the colomba is made in a similar manner to panettone, with flour, eggs, sugar, natural yeast and butter; unlike panettone, it usually contains candied peel and no raisins. The dough is then fashioned into a dove shape (colomba in Italian).
For this Pistachio Colomba Easter cake, we’ve selected the best pistachio to top the cake in order to deliver through a flawless preparation, the unique fragrance that defines this traditional dessert.
The cake is made by Bacco Tipicita’ al Pistacchio from Bronte, on the slopes of Mount Etna in Sicily. This typical village is well known for its special kind of pistachio, so tasteful and flavoured to be renamed Etna’s ‘green gold’. As well as the pistachio topping of paste and chopped nuts the cake is injected with pistachio paste throughout.
This emerald green fruit is a source of health due to its origin. In fact, it grows on lava soils receiving typical organoleptic properties with unmistakable flavour. The harvest takes place in alternate years, celebrated by the town with a great feast.
Sounds good, right? (Love the idea of a pistachio feast) And you can order it from their website, you just have to allow about 3 days for delivery from Italy.
They kindly sent one to me to review, and I am sure as you can tell I think it is delicious.
Although it was so huge it would not quite fit on my plate!
It was generously filled with pistachio paste.
It was so tasty. The panettone cake was so light, the pistachio filling was rich and the topping was tasty. We enjoyed a piece each in the afternoon, alongside a lovely cup of Earl grey. Although I think I am going to have to take some to work as I can’t see the two of us eating it all. I think if you were having people over for Easter it would make a great centre piece as it is so unusual, and the green colour is really eye catching. Some people (I don’t understand them) don’t like dried fruit, which is around a lot in hot cross buns or simnel cake, so this would be a great alternative to the usual Easter desserts (or just to have with a cup of tea in the afternoon). Plus it would feed plenty.
If you fancy it, the link to the website is here. At the moment it is £11.95+p&p which I think is really reasonable for a handmade product, especially one of this size.
Alongside the cake, they also sent a little brochure detailing all the other pistachio products they make, including a sort of pistachio nutella-style spread, and pistachio pesto (look here if you fancy it).
Do you normally have any Easter traditions? When I was little we tended to have toasted hot cross buns, and of course an Easter egg hunt in the garden, but often now we are away for Easter (the bank holidays mean that Andy can get a longer holiday for less days off) so often we have not had anything traditional.
*I was sent this to review for the blog, all opinions are my own.
Wow this looks fantastic! Love the sound of it. Bit more interesting than your standard sponge.
My family aren’t overly religious (except for my mum who we (lovingly) joke is a closet Christian – she’s quietly religious and will go to church but doesn’t really preach or talk much about it!) – in fact my dad is a strong atheist. Easter was always just about chocolate eggs as sad as that sounds. We didn’t have cake because my dad can’t eat dried fruit (it goes straight through him which is lovely…) – which is the same for Christmas! So sad because it’s only now I’m grown up that I realise all the good stuff I’ve been missing!
Oh your poor Dad! We were not religious growing up either so it was all about a hunt in the garden for eggs. I don’t think we ever had simnel cake, but we did have hot cross buns often. Yes dried fruit is in so many things but luckily I love it 🙂