Panettone is one of the Christmas traditionals held in Italy

There are many different Christmas traditionals held in Italy. But as food is such a highlight in Italian culture there is a focus on the sweets served this time of year. The two most well-known Italian Christmas treats are the Panettone and the Pandoro!
These two sweet treats come from different regions in the north of Italy. The Panettone is a traditional cake from Milan, while Pandoro stems from Verona historically. With Milan being the capital city of the region Lombardy, it is the richest and the most populated region in the whole of Italy. Verona is famous because it is the town where Shakespeare used as the settings in three of his plays: Romeo and Juliet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Taming of the Shrew.
The Panettone Milanese cake has a dome shape to it, with a cylindrical base. Whereas the Pandoro is traditionally shaped like a frustum with an eight pointed star section at the top.
When preparing both of these cakes there is a very long time that it takes to prepare them because they are both slow rising cakes. It can take at least up to 24 hours in order to have a delicious Panettone or Pandoro!
In the last few years it has become possible to buy a lot of different versions of the traditional Christmas cakes, Panettone and Pandoro. They can be filled with different types of chocolate, fruit cream or with different creams.
The original traditional recipe for Panettone and Pandoro includes using natural ingredients of the highest quality, such as flour, butter, sugar and eggs. For a classic Panettone, it must include raisins and candied orange and citron have to be added in with the ingredients.
In some regions across Italy, Italians sometime eat a piece of Panettone or Pandoro together with a mascarpone cream, prepared using mascarpone cheese, sugar, egg yolks and typically a sweet liqueur such as amaretto di Saronno, an Italian aromatic liqueur made from herbs and bitter almonds.