Dubai Chocolate Pandoro Christmas Cake

Recipe: Dubai Chocolate Pandoro Christmas Cake Recipe »

Create a showstopping Dubai Chocolate Pandoro Christmas Cake for Christmas dessert this year. A classic pandoro is filled with Dubai chocolate and then covered with chantilly cream and decorated with fresh raspberries and a bow! This is a stunning make ahead dessert.

About This Dubai Chocolate Pandoro Christmas Cake

Sometimes you want a classic Christmas fruit cake but sometimes you prefer a Christmas cake with fresh fruit. This raspberry topped pandoro is a spectacular way to serve up a Pandoro (Italian Christmas bread). Pandoro is a sweet bread shaped like a star from Verona in Italy. It's soft and buttery, like a brioche although sweeter and definitely strays into the cake category with its deliciously sweet flavour. Pandoro and Pannettone are both popular Italian Christmas treats.

But hidden inside this one is a filling of luscious Dubai chocolate filling with pistachio kataifi and chocolate! On the outside is whipped cream and fresh raspberries. This is a showstopping Christmas cake plus it also has another bonus to it.

This raspberry Pandoro is best made a day ahead of time so you have more time to do other things on Christmas Day! I love a make ahead dessert, especially for a busy time like Christmas Day lunch or dinner.

Video How To Make Dubai Chocolate Pandoro Christmas Cake

Video: How to Make A Pandoro Christmas Cake With Dubai Chocolate

Ingredients For Dubai Chocolate Pandoro Christmas Cake

Pandoro - These are easily available at supermarkets around Christmas time. The most classic brand for Pandoro is Bauli.

Chocolate- Use milk or dark chocolate. I prefer dark because the rest is quite sweet.

Kataifi pastry - this is a fine pastry that looks like vermicelli noodles found at Middle Eastern grocery stores or at some Greek greengrocers or nut stores.

Butter - Salted butter please (we need to balance the sweetness)

Pistachio Cream - This is not pistachio pesto, it is a sweetened pistachio cream.

Tahini - Available at supermarkets. Both hulled or unhulled tahini works.

Sugar - Use caster or superfine sugar.

Cream cheese - Full fat cream cheese, not light to help stabilise the cream.

Cream - Use thickened or double cream

Vanilla - Use vanilla extract, paste or essence

Raspberries - Buy these close to the day that you want to make this cake. Check that there is no mould or mushy ones.

Tips For Making Dubai Chocolate Pandoro Christmas Cake

1 - Make sure that you have enough room in the fridge for this pandoro as it needs to stay in the fridge until you want to serve it.

2 - This raspberry Pandoro can be made a day or two ahead of time.

3 - I also make the crispy kataifi a few days ahead of time and keep it in an air tight container. It will keep for up to 5-6 days in an airtight container. Make sure to fry the kataifi until very crispy.

4 - Hollowing out the Pandoro bread is easy with a sharp, small bread knife. Make sure to reserve the base of the bread to close it all up at the end.

5 - I put a layer of chocolate between the pandoro bread not just for flavour but also to keep the pistachio kataifi filling crisp, especially if you make it ahead of time. Chocolate is a barrier to stop the kataifi absorbing moisture from the pandoro.

6 - The amount of pistachio kataifi filling required depends on how much you hollow out of the pandoro. I try to hollow out as much as I can while leaving around an inch of bread. I've specified quite a lot of pistachio katafi in the recipe just in case-if you have leftover pistachio kataifi it's fantastic served with chocolate or vanilla ice cream or even Greek yogurt!

7 - Chill your mixer or Thermomix bowl and whisk before whipping the cream. Also keep the cream in the fridge until you whip it so that it is very cold. Both these things will enable the cream to whip up nice and thick.

8 - Getting perfect raspberries for this cake can be a challenge as raspberries can easily turn soft and mushy. I advise buying the raspberries on the day or the day before you plan to make the cake but inspect each box carefully for signs of mushiness or mold. Mold spreads quickly so once you get one raspberry with mold, the raspberries surrounding it turn too. I always suggest erring on the side of caution and getting more raspberries than needed. It's raspberry season at the moment so they aren't as expensive as they normally are. And really I would only make this cake for Christmas where you want to splurge!

9 - You can also replace the raspberries with a mixture of fresh berries like strawberries, blueberries and raspberries. Strawberries are larger and usually cheaper than raspberries and the overall effect with the mixed berries is also beautiful. 

10 - This Christmas cake won't have the same visual effect with frozen fruit as it starts to bleed colour once it thaws.

11 - How to cut this giant Pandoro? Start with tall vertical slices and then cut these in half so that you get two serves per tall wedge of Pandoro.

If you love Pandoro then try this 3 ingredient Pandoro Christmas Tree recipe that is even easier where we layer it like a tree. Or try this idea where we fill pandoro with gelato!

Dubai Chocolate Pandoro Christmas Cake Recipe

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Recipe Overview

Preparation time: 50 minutes plus 45 minutes chilling time

Cooking time: 20 minutes

Serves: 16 people

Ingredients Needed

For Filling

• 1 Pandoro (750g/1.6lbs)
• 225g/9ozs dark or milk chocolate
• 150g/5ozs kataifi pastry
• 60g/2ozs butter
• 360g/12.7ozs pistachio cream
• 20g/0.7ozs tahini
• Pinch salt

For Cream

• 150g/5ozs caster or superfine sugar
• 125g/4ozs cream cheese, cubed
• 600ml/20flozs thickened cream or double cream
• 2 teaspoons vanilla

To Decorate

• 1.05kg/2.3lbs fresh raspberries (or 6x175g/6oz punnets)
• 1 metre/1 yard Red velvet ribbon 6mm/0.25inch wide

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1 HOLLOW - Remove Pandoro from packaging and turn upside down. Cut out the centre of the Pandoro trying to leave about an inch from the sides and top. Reserve the bottom piece of the pandoro as we will replace it to close it up.

Step 2 CHOCOLATE - Melt chocolate in microwave or in a double boiler (30 second increments on 70% power). Spread across the cut area of the Pandoro reserving some chocolate to seal the top. Refrigerate the Pandoro while you make the filling.

Step 3 KATAIFI - Cut up the kataifi pastry with scissors into 1/2 inch pieces and pull the pastry apart so that it isn't compacted. Heat a large frying pan with high sides on medium heat. Melt the butter and then add the kataifi in batches, turning it with tongs to ensure that it is crispy on all sides. This takes time, around 15-20 minutes or so, so take your time to ensure that the kataifi is really crispy and buttery. Note: this step can be done 2-3 days ahead of time, see tip above. Mix the kataifi with the pistachio cream, tahini and salt mixing well.

Step 4 FILL - By now the chocolate should be set. Add in the pistachio kataifi filling and fill up to almost the top leaving half an inch gap. Spread the top with the reserved melted chocolate (melt again if it has set). Trim the bottom of the pandoro piece to fit the gap and close up. Then trim the sides of the star so that it doesn't protrude as much.

Step 5a CREAM - To make the cream, fit a mixer with a beater attachment. Beat the sugar and cream cheese until completely smooth with no lumps at all. Then switch to a whisk attachment and add the cream and vanilla. Whisk until you get a thick whipped cream that if you run a knife through the cream, it holds without moving.

Step 5b THERMOMIX CREAM - Thermomix directions: place the sugar and cream cheese in TM bowl with butterfly whisk, set to 15 seconds, speed #4. Then add the cream and vanilla and set to 2 minutes, speed #4. Remove MC halfway through and watch the cream through to check that it doesn't overbeat. You should be able to run a knife through the cream and the cut should hold.

Step 6 DECORATE - Place the pandoro on a cake board on a cake turntable. Spread the cream around the pandoro evenly using an angled spatula to keep the cream smooth. Starting from the base, add raspberries one by one. Add bow on top. Store this uncovered in the fridge for 1 day.

Personal Note

I served this Pandoro cake at Friendsmas. We had it on the first weekend of December and Friendsmas is one of my favourite times of the year. I'll be honest though, this cake did cause a fight between Mr NQN and I. The day before I made this he took the car to go sailing so I asked him to pick up some raspberries for this. Normally I would pick the raspberries but he had the car and the shop was closing just after he was finishing.

"Make sure to pick really good raspberries, they're the main feature of this cake on the outside" I told him. "Yeah yeah," he said distractedly, loading his gear into the car.

He came home with lots of punnets of raspberries and placed them in the fridge. I didn't have a look at them until the next day and it was too late. A lot of them were soft and mushy, some even had mold on them.

"We need more raspberries," I told him that morning and then explained that he had to open each box to look at them (something I suspect he hadn't done before but I didn't say that). He got very huffy as soon as I told him that and told me that, "This is the last Friendsmas!" before storming off to buy them. It's a tantrum he throws every year at Halloween and Christmas and we still keep having them so I just ignore it for the most part.

He brought back more raspberries, some were still a bit on the way out. And I'd advise next time either buying them myself (which buys into the weaponised incompetence argument) or asking someone who has a good eye for detail to buy the raspberries!

In any case, tantrum over, he was much more pleasant after it having got it out of his system. And this is a picture of Lima Lima Delta, Laura's boyfriend who decided that it was a single serve cake!

So tell me Dear Reader, do you like Pandoro? Do you usualy make desserts ahead of time for Christmas or on the day itself?

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