Christmas dinner fruits, chocolate, raisins, and/or pine nuts, known as panettone, followed by "torrone" (enriched with cherries, chocolate, sweets and more), nougat and nuts. In Southern Italy instead of one cake they serve many kinds of marzipan, biscuits, zeppole, cannoli, candied fruits, and fresh fruits. In the last few decades, panettone has become popular as a Christmas sweet all over Italy. Pandoro is also a very popular cake at Christmas and New Year, accompanied by a good Champagne. One typical Dutch tradition is that of 'gourmet,' an evening-long event where small groups of people sit together around a gourmet-set and use their
Genoa cake Genoa cake Genoa cake (also simply Genoa) is a fruit cake consisting of sultanas, currants or raisins, glacé cherries, almonds, and candied orange peel or essence, cooked in a batter of flour, eggs, butter and sugar. Although the name "Genoa cake" is mainly used in the UK, where recipes for it have been around since the 19th century, it is a variant of the Pandolce cake which originated in 16th century Genoa as a Christmas cake. Unlike Genoa cake, traditional Pandolce includes pine nuts as a major ingredient and uses yeast as its raising agent, which requires several hours to