What is Pandolcini?

The Pandolcini Antica Genova® are delicious sweets prepared with the same family recipe of the Pandolce Antica Genova®, a traditional sweet with a leavened dough enriched with raisins and dried fruit.

Pandolcini Antica Genova® is the modernization of Pandolce Antica Genova®, which is a common sweet during Christmas time.

Inspired by Pandolce Antica Genova®, this traditional pastry changes its dress and becomes informal in a one-portion format, in a smaller shape called the Pandolcino Antica Genova®.

Pandolcini Grondona adds the practical on-the-go packages, they are perfect to keep in your bag for a delicious snack.

They are also excellent for breakfast with coffee and milk, as the Genovese tradition wants.

Grondona recreated the same traditional recipe, the natural pastry from Liguria, so fragrant and crumbly. Enriched with raisins, candied fruits, and pine nuts, with the family’s care in production.

There is always a moment to treat yourself to pleasure: a break at the office, at school, in the gym, or on the go.

Pandolcini Ingredients:

Each Pandolcini Antica Genova is made respecting the Grondona traditional recipe. The sourdough is combined with wheat flour, sultanas raisins, butter, sugar, candied fruits, (orange peel, apples, pears, pineapples, glucose-fructose syrup, sugar, lemon juice), fresh-barn eggs, pine kernels, raising agents (disodium diphosphate, sodium, hydrogen carbonate), and dried anise fruits, to provide the pastries their unique look, taste, and consistency.

Grondona Pandolcini Story

Pandolce Genovese is called Raisins Cake in the United Kingdom and the USA. According to a legend, it was a doge, or Andrea Doria admiral of the Republic of Genoa, in ‘500, to announce a competition among the pastry chefs of Genoa. The challenge was for the chefs to create a cake representative of the wealth of Genoa, nutritious, long shelf life, and suitable for long sea voyages.

According to the ancient tradition, it should be brought to the table by the youngest of the house and served with a sprig of laurel in the middle, a symbol of luck and well-being. As soon as it was brought by the young man, he should give it to the eldest of the house to be cut and distributed.

Today Pandolce Genovese has been reduced in its size, to be appreciable outside of the Christmas holiday, and to be enjoyed on the go, any day.

How to eat Pandolcini Antica Genova?

In order to fully perceive the flavors and aromas, which must be released in the air, the panettone must be served at room temperature. Putting it on the radiator has precisely the purpose of increasing its temperature, and therefore letting the aromas be released even better. But heating it too much dries out the dough and makes it worse the second time it is tasted. So yes, on the radiator, but not too much.

Like any dessert, Pandolcini Antica Genova® should be paired by concordance and not by contrast with a dry or brut wine. If it has to be bubbly, let it be a demi-sec Champagne, a Moscato, a sweet Malvasia, or however wine with a different residual sugar. Marsala is a good match too, as liquor or as the base ingredient for eggnog.

The cream, even though delicate, hides the original flavor of panettone, it enriches it but mortifies it at an aromatic level. This is a rich and resounding dessert in its own right, it doesn’t need any support.

But if cream must be, rather a good homemade mascarpone, and not a mascarpone-based cream.

Pandolcini Recipe:

Ingredients (for one Pandolce Genovese for 10 persons):

Butter at room temperature 85 g

Sugar 100 g

Eggs (1 medium) 55 g

Flour 00 300 g

Fine salt 1 g

Raisins 230 g

Candied fruit 150 g

Pine nuts 20 g

Anise seeds

Baking powder 10 g

To prepare the Pandolcini Antica Genova, start by dicing orange and candied citron. Now move on to the room temperature butter that you will cut into pieces.

Then take a planetary mixer fitted with the leaf and add the butter and sugar, sifted flour, and baking powder.

Add the salt and the egg and start to knead at medium speed. While you are kneading, add the room temperature milk.

When the milk is absorbed, stop the mixer for a moment and add the orange, citron, and raisins, previously rinsed under running water and dried.

Finally, add the pine nuts. Run the mixer again for about 10 seconds at medium speed to mix the ingredients. Transfer the dough to a pastry board and compact it with your hands.

At this point, lightly press the top of the dough with your hands in order to flatten it slightly.

Slide your hands along the edges of the dough so as to adjust them and give a well-defined disc shape to the Pandolcini Antica Genova®.

You will get a disc about 3 cm high and 10 cm in diameter. Then place it on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Using a tarot or a sharp blade, make a diamond pattern on the surface, cutting diagonal lines.

You can now bake your Pandolcini Antica Genova® in a static oven preheated to 180 ° C for 45-50 minutes. Or in a fan oven preheated to 160 ° C for 35-40 minutes).

Perfume the Pandolcini dough with orange blossom water or Zibibbo wine and flavor the dough with fennel seeds for an even stronger and irresistible flavor!

Pandolce Antica Genova can be kept under a glass bell for a maximum of 7 days.