Ingredients:

1 pandoro

500g mascarpone

4 eggs

100g sugar

1 tsp rum extract

Chocolate chips

Method:

Tip: before starting making the cream, it is recommendable to keep the mascarpone and the eggs in ambient temperature.

Separate the egg-yolks from the whites into two different bowls. Add a pinch of salt to the egg whites and whisk until stiff, using a mixer. Add the sugar to the yolks in the other bowl and whisk until the compound is light and foamy. Add then the mascarpone and keep on whisking until the egg-yolks, the sugar and the mascarpone will be well amalgamated. You can add the rum extract. Now take the stiff whites and add them to the other compound, mixing with a spoon slowly from the bottom to the top of the bowl, to maintain the whites stiff. You can add the chocolate chips if you like.

Once the cream is ready, take the pandoro, and cut it into horizontal slices, all of them equally about 3 cm high (more or less one inch). Put the cream in between the slices, superimposing one upon another asymmetrically obtaining the shape of stars, as you can see in the picture. If the chocolate chips in the cream are not enough for the ones who are addicted to chocolate, the pandoro can be topped with chocolate melted in a pan or in a bain-marie. While if you feel guilty and prefer a lighter recipe, you can just add some fruit, like berries, on the stars’ tips of the pandoro’s slices.

Leave it into the fridges few hours before eating. Now enjoy your Italian Christmas dessert!

Eleonora Peruch

Image Credit: Galbani