Is Panettone the biggest waste of money

[Lily27]

Every Christmas, stores have the most gorgeously packaged panettone, it feels impossible not to buy at least one. And the big ones don't come cheap. My gripe is that you open it and it's nothing but eggy, vanilla flavoured fruit bread in the shape of a cake. I've used it to make French toast and it's fine, but nothing you couldn't do with a simple fruit loaf from Tesco or M&S. Panettone - a rip-off or worth it?

@MsRinky me too! Actually I got a bit carried away this year and bought two of the Dolce & Gabbana Fiasconaro ones

I never used to see the point in panettone but I'm borderline obsessed with it now, I'm not sure what happened!

Last year a business associate sent me an M&S salted caramel panettone and it was amazing. Haven't had chance to get to M&S lately, but I'm hoping they still do it. Came in a fabulous tin, too.

Oh dear, you have to get the Harvey Nichols one, it is bloody AMAZING!

I made one a few years back - it was amazing - but took quite a bit of effort!

@Nowisthemonthofmaying Hope you've got a saffron and citrus one, they are unbelievable.

I like it, so I buy one. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t buy one.

Try Tunis cake !
It's lovely

I’ve never seen the appealing. Really dry cake with odd sultan in. You have dunk it to be able to eat it. Taste like it’s 3 months out of date.

I love the M&S chocolate one. Always find a fruit one a bit disappointing.

I like it. But I do agree there's nothing exactly roof-raising special about it. And I prefer the cheap generic ones to the posh artisan ones which tend to be like chewing a brick. Mind you, I think the same about a lot of traditional Italian sweets. Pandoro is worse, yay! Madeira cake by any other name.

Many years ago I used to work for a company that supplied a well known supermarket chain. I used to roll these for 8 hours a day!. I cannot tell you just how much zest, juices & oils went into them & that’s before adding the fruit, my hands were the softest they’d ever been & the smell was amazing & afterwards we’d top them with this cracked sugar stuff. I think ours used to retail at £10 (we got staff discount) but the taste was amazing. I only tried it the once because at that time I wasn’t a fan of fruit bread, but I’d love one now. That said as people have said the ones I see now in the shops are all packaging & a lot of them look dry & tasteless. I think if you want a good one you have to pay more. I loved working there, we used to make fancy breads, we had a cheese & mustard bread that was absolutely divine & a tomato bread that used to be chopped & hand pulled. I put on a stone & half working there, I mean who wants a cold ham sandwich when you can smell all that hot fresh bread.

My Italian friend sent me one from Italy a few years back. It was divine.

My ex boss had an Italian wife and he would name drop her heritage in to every conversation. Anyway, every Christmas he would buy all the staff he directly line managed a panettone. It became a long standing joke in the team as we all hated it, but had to accept his tight wad shit gift with thanks. This guy earned 200k without bonuses and we would have all preferred a bottle of plonk tbh.

You have to get a good one. I buy one from a local deli - it’s quite expensive and does not have pretty packaging but it tastes great.

oh they're delicious. The expensive ones, anyway. I would eat it all day every day if I could.

@TroysMammy

My Italian friend sent me one from Italy a few years back. It was divine.

Come off it! I have Italian friends so I've eaten a lot of panettone over the years. The first few of the panettone mountain arrived this week. I concede that a good one can be quite nice and if you get one in a pretty tin that's a bonus but also a burden because after a few Christmases you wonder what you are going to do with yet another empty tin.

But it's essentially fruity bread. A divine experience it is not.

I love it - but you have to have it in certain ways otherwise I do admit that it can be dry. Traditionally you are supposed to have it with marsala and mascarpone but I love it dipped in hot chocolate. It is also very good in bread and butter pudding...

Go for a stollen instead, with some quality butter - much better in my opinion!

@the80sweregreat - do you have a recipe / link to buy one?

I think Peep Show summed up why I don’t bother with panettone.

I'm not a fan. I've feel like I've eaten nothing after having a slice. I'm not a fan of dried fruit anyway so people usually give me a pandoro instead. It's light as a feather and I honestly think I could eat a whole family sized one in a single sitting then have dinner. Not what you want when you're living a calorie controlled life

I’ve never really enjoyed the taste but for some reason I feel compelled to buy one at Christmas. I end up force feeding it to DH and the DDs.

[quote Havehope21]@the80sweregreat - do you have a recipe / link to buy one?[/quote]
I bought one out of Tesco !
My fil used to buy his one in Sainsbury's
It is nice , but not really sold in high numbers so not always easy to track down!
I've never made one.

Oh God, I need stollen too

Tis yuck.