Pistachio Chocottone

These mini pistachio chocottone sweet breads are the ideal gift for Christmas!! They're decadent, soft, airy and so flavorful!

Course Breakfast, Dessert

Cuisine Mediterranean

Keyword Pistachio Chocottone

Prep Time 15

Cook Time 35

Dough rising 4

Total Time 4 50

Servings servings

Calories 698kcal

Author Sonila

Add 1 tbsp sugar to 1 cup of lukewarm milk. Then add 1 packet of active yeast (about 7 grams). Mix to dissolve. Finally add half a cup of all purpose flour, mix well and cover to let the starter dough bubble. Make sure it has room to grow.

Get a glass mixing bowl, add 4 eggs, 4 egg yolks and start mixing with the hand held mixer. Add 1 cup of sugar and continue mixing until the cream starts to whiten a little bit. Add butter while still mixing. Butter is supposed to be soft and in room temperature. Then add the starter dough in. See video in how it's supposed to look.
Then add both the liqueur and the vanilla extract and continue mixing. Add zest of 1 orange. Then add cocoa and mix slowly so you don't make it fly everywhere. Once cocoa is incorporated, then start adding the flour in slowly. Once it gets difficult to mix with the hand held mixer, switch to a spatula.
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave the bowl in a warm spot in your kitchen for about 1-1.5 hours.
While the dough is rising, get the pistachios and add them to a ziplock bag. Use a kitchen hammer to chop them up inside the bag. Alternatively, you can use a mortar and pestle to break the pistachios up.
Once dough is done rising, add the pistachios in, mix with a spatula. Then use slowly add the dough to panettone molds. Add enough until half of the mold.
Place the molds in a baking tray and leave them in a warm place for 2-3 hours until dough has risen over the edge of the mold and looks like a dome.
Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 30-35 minutes (make sure oven is pre-heated first).
Garnish the top with more pistachios if desired. Let the chocottones cool down before slicing them open. Enjoy and happy holidays.

Technically this recipe yields 3 medium size panettones with chocolate and pistachios, which is about 6 full servings. However, you can stretch it to 8 when you have kids.
In more traditional fashion, you can add a layer of pistachio cream over the panettone and even infuse the cream into air pockets inside the bread.