We use a lot of orange pastes in making panettone. I have used both natural and artificial flavouring, and naturally, the homemade one just gives a different taste. Since artificial pastes are more potent, a small amount is used for a huge batch of panettone. Panettone using homemade orange pastes tastes more mellow. It's really a personal preference. Artificial flavouring is more cost effective, more convenient, less labour intensive and tastes great. However, because we're making homemade panettone with love and quality ingredients, isn't it better to use homemade pastes? Here is a batch I made, using Cara Cara Navel oranges.
🍊 Pick good oranges with unblemished skin (amount depends on how much you need to cook)
🍊 Clean the oranges then blanch unpeeled whole oranges (cook in boiling water) until they are soft. This gets rid of bitterness. This takes about 40 mins.
🍊 Cut into smaller pieces, remove seeds and put in the food processor
🍊 Pulse and blend until smooth
🍊 Weigh the blended orange and add about 40% of sugar in weight to the orange (I don't like it too sweet as I already add sugar to the panettone dough)
🍊 Transfer to a pot. Add juice of 1 fresh lemon, 1 clove star anise and 1/2 stick of cinnamon (all 3 are optional). Next time I will try adding Kaffir lim juice and leaves because I really enjoy the burst of flavour it provides
🍊 Cook on stove top, stirring continuously so it doesn't burn. This is to reduce the moisture content to minimum
🍊 Cooked paste should be sticky and dry-ish and you'll notice the colour turning into a deeper golden hue. This takes a long time, from 30-45 minutes
🍊 Transfer to sterilised jars immediately. Make sure the jars can be used for canning.
🍊 After transferring, close the lid tight. Put the jars into a large pot and fill it with boiling water, until the entire jar is submerged. Start timer (set for 10mins) as soon as water boils.
🍊 Once 10 mins are up, remove jars, let them cool completely. Done.
I keep the orange pastes in the fridge. I always use them up within 2-3 months, so I haven't kept them for longer. To keep the freshness, I prefer to make a batch every 2-3 months. The entire process isn't really that hard. We need to clear a few hours to make a batch. You can also add the paste to shokupan, brioche and cakes.
Let me know if you made a batch and tell me how it goes for you.
Happy baking!
Lily
At what point do you add this to your panettone?