• 1 1/2 cups walnuts
• 2/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup almonds
• 1/3 cup pine nuts
• 1/3 cup hazelnuts
• 1/4 cup candied pineapple
• 1/4 cup candied citron or orange peel
• 7 tbsp flour
• 4 tbsp sugar
• 3 tbsp cocoa powder, plus more for dusting the cake tops
• 1 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp plus 1/8 tsp fresh-ground black pepper
• 1/3 cup honey
• 3 Tbsp sherry
• Edible rice paper or large round spring roll wrappers
made of rice

Preheat oven to 350. Butter and flour sides and bottoms of three round 5" cake pans. Using the outside of a pan as a guide and with a sharp knife on a cutting board, cut circles of rice paper. Place paper in bottoms of pans.

Toast hazelnuts at 350 for a few minutes, then rub them in a tea towel to remove skins as best you can - it is not necessary to remove all skins.

Chop the walnuts, hazelnuts and almonds coarsely and place in large mixing bowl. Chop the candied peel into small pieces and add to bowl. Add the pineapple, pine nuts, chocolate chips and all the dry ingredients, stir to mix. Heat the honey and sherry until hot but not boiling and pour into the nut mixture, stirring with a wooden spoon just until the liquid is incorporated. You should have a very thick, moist mass. Spoon the batter into prepared pans. Press down with a buttered potato masher or your buttered hands until distributed evenly.

Bake for 30-40 minutes until dry looking. These cakes will not rise; the baking is to melt the chocolate chips and bake the honey/sherry into all the rest of the ingredients. Remove from oven, run a knife around the edge of pans and turn cakes out onto wire rack to cool. This must be done immediately after the cakes come out of the oven or they will firm up and become impossible to remove.

When thoroughly cooled, dust tops heavily with cocoa powder. Wrap snugly in wax paper and tape sealed. Then wrap in gift wrap as shown. Panforte was developed long before the invention of refrigerators and was intended to keep for months on the pantry shelf, but we recommend keeping refrigerated, and using within four weeks.

Buon appetito!