Smells like Christmas, ie. Paneton

Its Christmastime in Peru!!!  This means a couple things.  The most important ones are : summer is coming and its paneton season.

First off, Christmas in the summer is downright strange.  It is even stranger because apart from it being summer, people do the same thing and decorate in the same manner as in the Northern Hemisphere.  The Santa Clauses and snowmen decorations were out the first week in November.  People have decorated their houses with lights and reindeer and sleighs.  They want pictures with Santa Claus at the mall and they hang snowflakes in the windows and put (fake) pine trees up.  It just doesn't fit.  In summer you don't display snowmen and snowflakes.  Maybe sandmen and palm decorated cactus would be better.

Christmas in Peru is not complete without Panettone, or as they call it in Peru, "Panetón".  Forget the santa clauses and the reindeer and the trees.  For most Peruvians, paneton IS christmas.  People are obsessed with it and it is everywhere during the Christmas season in its classic box, or in the more convenient bag.  It only comes out in force between November and January, but you can always find a few store brands that have it year around.

These are just a few of the myriad brands of Paneton

 There are ads for it everywhere.  A lot of time its a picture of a happy child biting into a paneton like its a slice of watermelon with a mug of hot chocolate.  Yes, it can be horridly hot outside and people eat their paneton with hot chocolate.  And enjoy it.

one of the more famous brands.

Everyone takes part in the Paneton madness, including the mall.  They have transformed the ticket booth where you pay parking into gigantic paneton boxes!  Its amazing and funny and disturbing all at once.  It just goes to show you how much people are obsessed with it here.

The paneton ticket booth

As a result of Peruvians being obsessed with Paneton, I am obsessed with finding out why they are obsessed with it.  To my rescue came the weekly magazine that comes in the Saturday paper.  They wrote an entire article about paneton!  While it ended up not being too informative as to the "why", it did give me a better background about the Peruvian Paneton.  I learned that :

• Paneton was first sold in Peru around 1900.
• The ice cream lord, D'anofrio bought the recipe for paneton to amplify their market and is the market leader now in selling paneton.
• 19,000 tons of paneton were eaten in 2010
• On average 3.5 panetons are eaten per family a year (I would have thought a lot more)
• There are 110 brands of paneton in Peru
• You have normal versions and you have the healthy versions made with just raisins and whole wheat flour and you have chocolate ones and "Incan" ones that are made with quinoa flour and other types of "Incan" flour.
• The candied fruits on the inside are often made with candied watermelon peel and dyed to appear like different fruits.
• Paneton is so loved that there is an essence of Paneton, that is sprayed in the box or bag before sealing it to intensify the smell of the paneton.  When you open the box or bag your nose is greeted with the Christmas smell. Of paneton, not pine trees.

I must admit that Paneton is quite tasty.  I don't really like the top part because it can be kinda burned tasting, and I don't see the point in eating it with butter, but it has a nice sweet flavor.  At the supermarket you can have a paneton taste test because they give you samples to get you to buy them.  One really bad one reminded me of acetone and one was really gummy, but the rest were not too sweet, with a nice softness.   I still don't get the obsession, but I least I know more about paneton and I can pick out the brands that I like.  I guess its a process.  One cannot fully adjust to Peruvian Christmas the first time around...