Pandoro tree

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PRESENTATION

Pandoro: plain, with chocolate drops, flavored with orange, or served with mascarpone cream. There are so many ways to enjoy this dessert at Christmas and during the entire festive period! Today we present you with a more'ish and rich recipe: pandoro tree, garnished with diplomat cream, red currant and blueberries. Making this scenographic Christmas cake is easy: simply cut your pandoro into slices, stack them so that they are offset, and decorate with tufts of diplomat cream, if you like. You can serve it so that slice by slice you can uncover all the velvety flavor of the cream between one layer and the next. Prepare your palates and plates to enjoy the pandoro tree, a marvelous Christmas dessert!

If you are looking for other ways to use pandoro, have a look to the following recipes:

Pandoro cake

Pandoro tiramisù

Pandoro tiramisù with baileys

Pandoro tiramisù with wild berries

Zuccotto di pandoro

Pandoro stars with eggnog cream

INGREDIENTS

Ingredients for the pandoro
Pandoro pastry 2 lbs (1 kg)
Currants 3 tbsp (30 g)
Blueberries 3 tbsp (30 g)
For the diplomat cream
Whole milk 1 cup (250 g)
Heavy cream ¾ cup (180 g)
Egg yolks 3
Sugar 6 tbsp (75 g)
Powdered sugar 3 tbsp (20 g)
Vanilla bean 1
Cornstarch 3 tbsp (25 g)
Preparation

How to prepare Pandoro tree

To prepare pandoro tree, start from the diplomat cream: first of all, prepare the pastry cream, by heating the milk in a saucepan with half a vanilla bean and its seeds 1. Beat the egg yolk and sugar together in a bowl 2, then add the cornstarch 3; as an alternative you can replace it with the same amount of rice starch, or potato starch.

Remove the bean with some pincers and gradually add the heated milk to the mixture 4, stirring with the whisk. Place the mixture back on the stove and stir continuously until the cream thickens 5. Place the pastry cream in a bowl and leave it to cool thoroughly at room temperature and then in the refrigerator; place a sheet of plastic wrap over the surface to cover it 6.

Prepare the cream: place the thoroughly chilled liquid milk in the planetary mixer bowl 7 with whisks, or use an electric whisk to beat it; when the cream becomes full-bodied in consistency, add the sieved powdered sugar 8 and amalgamate with the cream, stirring with a spatula 9.

Once the pastry cream fully cools, gradually add the chantilly cream 10 and temper both creams with a whisk 11 to obtain a frothy, smooth and homogeneous mass 12. Place the cream in a star-tipped pastry bag.

Take the sliced pandoro and cut it into horizontal slices, each around 0.8 inches (2 cm) thick (13-14). Now take a serving dish, place the base slice on it, add some of the diplomat cream you prepared earlier to the middle 15,

then continue with the next slice: place it on top, rotated so that all the tips of the slice beneath are visible. Now add some more cream 16 and continue adding slices and layers of cream to recreate the pandoro 17. Decorate the protruding tips with tufts of cream 18

and then garnish with currants and blueberries, by adding them to the tufts of cream and sprinkling them over the surface (19-20). If you like, complete the dessert with a sprinkling of powdered sugar before serving the pandoro tree 21!

Storage

Store the pandoro tree in the refrigerator for 1-2 days, remove from the refrigerator around 20 minutes before serving.

The diplomat cream can be frozen, although this may slightly change its consistency.

Tips

You can fill the pandoro with whatever you like, including mascarpone cream or chocolate pastry cream. Each idea will no doubt be a more'ish occasion for enjoying the Christmas dessert in a different way!