Panforte

Man, am I behind on the blogging. I've got a few new recipes to write about, but I had some complications with my Flickr account (ended up upgrading to a Pro account) and not too much time to write lately. I'll probably do a separate post for each item. The first one is the Italian Panforte from Room for Dessert. This is definitely one of the stranger desserts I've ever made, just because of the large and unusual combination of ingredients. It's sort of a chocolate tart/cake/brownie thing, but it included toasted almonds and hazelnuts, candied orange peels, chocolate, cocoa powder, sugar, honey, a little flour, lots of ground black pepper, lots of cinnamon, and even a little cayenne. The honey was the only liquid (you boil it with the sugar, then add it to the mixed dry ingredients), so as you can imagine, the finished product was pretty dense. Tasted good, but a little bit different with each bite, depending on the proportion of nuts/citrus you got. And then a final spicey bite of an aftertaste.