Is Panettone Hong Kong’s favourite Christmas cake? If you missed out on the Four Seasons Hong Kong’s famous festive treat, here’s how you can make your own Italian sweet bread at home

Dec 20 , 2020

Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong’s panettone has to be pre-ordered because the process of making it takes a few days – and its liable to sell out quick. Photo: Handout

Forget Christmas pudding and mince pies, when it comes to festive desserts Hong Kong has a clear favourite – particularly the version created by Ringo Chan, the award-winning pastry chef at Four Seasons Hong Kong

Hong Kong is known as an international melting pot and that holds true at Christmas, too, when we can look forward to experiencing Christmas traditions from a variety of cultures. And one of our city’s favourite adopted festive treats is Italy’s Christmas cake – panettone. Made from sourdough, raisins and fruit peel, this bread-like fruit cake is seen on supermarket shelves from late November, but the most anticipated panettone in recent years is the one created by the executive pastry chef at Four Seasons Hong Kong, Ringo Chan. People order in advance to obtain his coveted panettone in time for the festive season. He only bakes it for one and a half months a year and he can make up to 200 panettones annually.

The hotel has a pop-up shop in its lobby at this time of year where Chan’s treats can be bought, but the panettone has to be pre-ordered because the process of making it takes a few days.

Ringo Chan, executive pastry chef at Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong. Photo: Chen Xiaomei

“Our fermentation takes more than 30 hours,” explains Chan, who has been the pastry chef at the hotel since it opened. “After we mix the dough, we let it rise at room temperature for the long fermentation.”

Chan started to make panettone a few years ago quite by chance but was determined to perfect the recipe.

“We had the base recipe from one of our Italian chefs who had worked at the hotel before, but when we tried to make it, the ingredients here were different and we didn’t have any idea of how to make it better. Several years ago, my task was to make the best panettone. So I tried to make it every two days and I adjusted it a little bit each time – the sugar, the honey, the fermentation timing, the baking timing. We concentrated on this and wrote down everything, and every year we would adjust the recipe. Even now, we are still finding the best way to make it. We are still learning,” says Chan, who has worked in the industry for around 30 years, starting at the old Regent Hotel and then the Mandarin Oriental before moving to Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong.

The secret to the perfect panettone is in the ingredients, like good butter and Italian fruit peel. Photo: Chen Xiaomei

One of his secrets for making a perfect panettone is using the best ingredients – which for him means good quality butter and Italian fruit peel. “You need to have good ingredients, so we use French AOP butter, which is very high quality. It is licensed and only four regions can make the butter [around the French district bay of Les Veys]. Because 82 per cent of this butter is milk fat, the flavour is very good; it is very creamy. It is easy to get in supermarkets,” continues Chan.

“The panettone you get from the supermarket lasts a long time but we don’t add any stabilisers in ours, it is all natural so it only lasts around five days. It won’t get mouldy or anything but the fluffy texture and moisture is best [when eaten] within five days.”

Panettone comes from the Italian word panetto, which means a small loaf cake. Italy produces more than 7,100 tonnes of panettone each year and the popularity of the cake worldwide means around 10 per cent is sold abroad. The origins of the cake are mixed; some say it hails from the Roman Empire, others say it is a Lombard speciality with roots firmly in Milan. It is also said the pastry was first mentioned in a manuscript from the 1470s, written by a preceptor (teacher) in Milan’s House of Sforza.