Pampepato
This popular Christmas recipe bonds the celebration of Jesus’s birth with early European chocolate. It is said that the nuns of the Monastery of Corpus Domini in Ferrara, Italy, developed this skullcap-shaped chocolate incarnation of spice cake in the sixteenth century. Its name may relate to its pepper ingredient or to the pope’s bread. If it is difficult to locate citron and orange peel, substitute any dried fruit such as blueberries, currants, and/or ginger and sprinkle in some dark chocolate chips.
Ingredients:
CAKE:
1 ½ cups cake flour
1 ½ cups all-purpose unbleached flour (organic, stoneground
preferred)
¼ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
6 tablespoons candied citron, cut into very fine dice
¾ cups plus 2 tablespoons candied orange rind, cut into very fine
dice
2 small dried figs, finely minced
1 ¾ cups whole blanched almonds, toasted and coarsely chopped
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons water
1 ½ cups sugar
¼ cup ground sweet chocolate or ground sweet Mexican chocolate or chopped bittersweet chocolate
1 cup cocoa (not Dutch process)
Generous ½ teaspoon ground cloves
Generous pinch freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
ICING:
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted
Instructions:
WORKING AHEAD: Pampepato must be made at least 12 hours in advance. Ideally it should ripen 3 to 4 days. Keep tightly wrapped at room temperature. It freezes very nicely (before cloaking in chocolate).
MAKING THE CAKES: Butter and flour a cookie sheet. Preheat the oven to 300ºF. In a large shallow bowl, thoroughly mix the flours, baking powder, baking soda, candied fruits, figs, and nuts. In a small saucepan over medium heat, blend the water, sugar, ground chocolate, and cocoa to a cream-like consistency. Do not let it boil. Cool about 15 minutes and stir in the spices. Make a well in the dry ingredients, filling it with the chocolate mixture. Stir with a wooden spoon to combine everything, taking care not to over mix. It will be a very sticky dough. Use a rubber spatula to make two round mounds of the dough on the cookie sheet, spacing them about 3 inches apart. Each should be no more than 6 to 7 inches in diameter. Smooth the mounds.
BAKING, MELLOWING, AND ICING: Bake the cakes approximately 1 hour or until a tester inserted in center of one comes out clean. Cool to room temperature on the sheet. Then wrap the two cakes in plastic wrap and let them ripen at room temperature 12 hours to 4 days. Lay out a sheet of paper towels under a cake rack. Set the cakes upside down on a rack and spread an almost transparent film of melted chocolate over the bottom of each. Once it has hardened, flip the cakes over and spread a slightly thicker film over the rest of the cakes. When the chocolate hardens, rewrap the cakes and store them at room temperature.
SERVING: Slice the pampepato not in wedges, but like bread, across the width of the loaf, into long, ½ inch slices, using a large knife. Arrange on a platter. Serve with a sweet wine or with after dinner coffee.
Quantity: 6–8 servings per cake
Modified from “Chocolate Christmas Spice Cake (Pampepato),” The Splendid Table, https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/chocolate-christmas-spice-cakepampepato.
Red Chile Bizcochitos (Little Butter Cookies)
This is a popular Mexican recipe for Christmas cookies. These are also known as the New Mexico state cookie. They can be shaped to celebrate other local customs, including the Day of the Dead.
Ingredients:
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3 cups flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cup sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 ¼ cups butter
¼ to ½ teaspoon ground dried red chipotle chile, to taste
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ¼ teaspoons aniseed
1 large egg
6 ounces dark chocolate, broken into pieces
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 400º F. Sift together the cocoa powder, flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium bowl and set aside. Combine . cup of the sugar with the cinnamon in a small bowl and set aside. Put the butter, ground chile, and the remaining ½ cup sugar into the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, and beat on medium speed until fluffy, about 1 minute. Add the vanilla, aniseed, and egg and beat, stopping the mixer once or twice to scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, until well mixed, about 1 minute. Reduce the speed to low, then gradually add the flour mixture, scraping the sides of the bowl as needed, and beat until the dough begins to gather into a ball and comes cleanly away from the sides of the bowl, about 2 minutes. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and divide in half. Shape each half into a smooth ball. Cover with a clean dish towel and set aside to rest for 15–20 minutes.
Roll out half of the dough on a lightly floured surface or between sheets of parchment paper to a thickness of about 1⁄8 inch. Form into desired shapes with a cookie cutter and arrange 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake until golden, about 10 minutes. Transfer the cookies to a wire rack and sprinkle lightly with the reserved cinnamon-sugar mixture while still warm. Repeat the process with the remaining half of dough. Cool completely. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or waxed paper. Melt the chocolate in a large heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water, stirring until smooth. Dip the cookies halfway into the melted chocolate and place on the prepared baking sheet to cool, or place the cookies on the prepared baking sheet and drizzle the chocolate on top of the cookies with a fork. The chocolate will harden as it cools.
Quantity: 3–5 dozen, depending on the size of the cookie cutter
Deborah R. Prinz lectures about chocolate and culture around the world. She co-curates the exhibit “Semi[te] Sweet” for Temple Emanu-El’s Herbert and Eileen Bernard Museum, New York City, which is based on her book, On the Chocolate Trail.