Italian Christmas bread panattone w homemade clotted cream

There are longer and more complicated versions, which I also do, but this one is my fave. Panattone is one of my favourite breads, a bit imho like a really good raisin bread, and this is my quick easy version. I usually use only raisins, or mixture of raisins both golden and dark, dried currants, crainsins (dried cranberries). Sometimes I use chopped pecans and pistachios for the nuts. You can use what you like. Chopped dark baking chocolate bar is very good. White chocolate and chopped macadamia nuts is also very good with or without chopped pistachios. Pistachio and dried raisins. Or whatever you have and like.

1)Make a basic white yeast bread recipe using whole egg, and a tiny amount of finely milled yellow corn meal for a slight creamy color to the bread. Add a little bit of spice, such as cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg--but just a hint! It is not a spicy Christmas bread. Add your extras (such as raisins) in the middle of adding all the flour into the recipe, whilst the batter is still a bit wet. Finish the bread dough, let rise. Punch down, let rise again.

2) whilst rising the second time, prepare your pan, a round cake pan or tiny round cake pans, by buttering them, then cutting out parchment paper to fit. One circle of parchment for the bottom circle. The butter helps keep the paper in place! Then cut a rectangle to fit in the inside, with enough paper to rise above the pan, making the pan taller---this is how you get the tall shape of the bread. The bread will rise tall and up, then form the dome at the top slightly higher than the parchment paper rim.

3)For the last rising, place appropriate sized dough in corresponding pan size, so the dough rises up not out. Then bake til done (about 45 minutes in a hot oven) just like any bread. Let cool, then take off the parchment paper. Serve with butter, jams, sliced meat and cheeses, pickles...or fresh fruit and some butter.

Clotted cream is good on the bread too.

To make clotted cream, let some fresh double cream stay overnight out of the fridge in a slightly warm kitchen or cold kitchen. Then instead of turning to whipping cream when you whip it, it will turn to either butter with some liquid, or clotted cream. Use either, both are really good on the bread!

If you´ve made butter with the cream, you can add either a little flaked salt, or some fresh and dried herbs/spices, such as lavender buds and nutmeg, which is also good on the bread.