pangiallo with saffron glaze

Rachel Roddy’s wonderful Five Quarters has a gem of a recipe for pangiallo which means “yellow bread” in Italian. Our fragrant Lebanese saffron creates a sunny glaze for the “cake”, to remind us that spring is just round the corner.

Although pangiallo means “yellow bread” this isn’t a bread, nor is it a cake. But perhaps closest to a panforte – packed with nuts and fruit, beautifully spiced with nutmeg – it’s chewy, crunchy and quite the most delicious thing with a cuppa in the afternoon, or as a rather elegant “sweetmeat” alongside coffee at the end of a meal.

Pangiallo has roots in ancient Rome, and is said to mark the winter solstice, the end of the long winter days, the saffron glaze evoking the sun, heralding the arrival of warmer days.

Zejd’s saffron is very aromatic, and gives an intense colour when left to infuse in a tablespoon of warm water. If you do have a pestle and mortar, grinding the saffron is a more effective way of releasing aroma and colour. Both saffron and nutmeg together are gloriously aromatic combination, particularly as the cakes cook in the oven. The recipe is a wonderful way of using up any lingering Christmas nuts and left-over candied peel. Feel free to choose any vine fruit, just make sure you really do grate 1/2 a nutmeg – time well spent.

We halved the quantities of the saffron glaze from the original recipe but it still made enough to glaze both cakes. Our thanks to Rachel Roddy for allowing this adaptation of her recipe from Five Quarters.

makes 2 small cakes about 8-10 slices