Designer Italian fruit cakes costing over $100 are a holiday trend — and NYers can’t get enough

Fruitcake is getting fancy.

Panettone, the airy, sweet Italian bread studded with dried and candied fruits, has long been a Christmas staple. But, the often cheap and cheerful treat that costs around $10 for a circular, domed loaf, has gotten an artisanal upgrade in recent years — with the price tag to match.

Designers such as Roberto Cavalli, Dolce & Gabbana and Gucci all hock elaborately packaged panettone, as do trendy restaurants, with some costing close to $60 and even over $100 each.

“It’s so good, but definitely more than anyone in my family ever spent,” said Matt F., an Upper East Sider who is Italian-American and has developed an affinity for the $59 limited production panettone at Sant Ambroeus, the tony Italian restaurant with locations in Manhattan, East Hampton, Milan and Palm Beach.

The 43-year-old grew up eating cheap store-bought panettone from brands like Bauli. But, in 2021, he ordered a slide of panettone after a meal at Sant Ambroeus and was forever changed.

“It was so good that I said, ‘Oh hell. I’ll bring one home,’” said Matt, who declined to give his last name for privacy reasons.

Sant Ambroeus is hardly the only society magnet with pricey panettone. Cipriani sells one foe $65 while designer Roberto Cavalli has teamed up from Italy-based artisan pastry shop Olivieri 1882 on a $130 version, packaged in a tin with the designer’s signature Ray of Gold print. A $160 version from Gucci Osteria Beverly Hills is sold out.

In downtown NYC, Una Pizza Napoletana on the Lower East Side makes a $109 lemon-and-dark chocolate panettone that is sold out for buying onsite, but still available online through Goldbelly.

Chef/owner Anthony Mangieri defends the cost.

“All ours are hand-shaped, and it’s made with a mother yeast so it takes days to leaven before baking,” he told The Post. We “pay attention to every detail with every batch to understand the dough and create the best product. One of the really beautiful ingredients we use is candied lemon peel that is preserved using an ancient French method which takes days, but the end result is beautiful and clean and so special.”

At Travelers Poets & Friends in the West Village, bakers are whipping up $65 artisanal panettone in two flavors – a traditional loaf made with candied orange and citron, and a hazelnut chocolate panettone.

Each panettone takes two days to make using live mother yeast cultivated by master baker Luca Cascella, candied fruit from Northern Italy, hazelnuts from Piedmont and raisins sourced from California vineyards. 

“They’re handcrafted with the utmost care and attention to detail. They’ve become so popular we’re now shipping nationwide,” executive chef Riccardo Orfino told The Post. 

She Wolf Bakery, with pop up locations at greenmarkets around Manhattan and Brooklyn, has been selling panettone since 2022. The $65 sweet bread — naturally leavened and made with local butter, organic eggs studded with dried cherries, pistachios and candied orange peel — sells out of all 25 made within the first hour, a representative for the bakery told The Post.

The luxury panettone boom in the US can roughly be traced back to 2018, when Oprah featured a From Roy cake by Roy Shvartzapel, a Bay Area baker who has worked with Per Se’s Thomas Keller, El Bulli’s Ferran Adrià and famed French pastry chef Pierre Hermé.

In 2018, Roy’s panettone went for $49.99. They now sell for $102, and this year they were sold out for Christmas by December 2.

Scholars note that while panettone sticker shock may be a relatively new phenomenon in the US, the bread has always been about decadence.

“Panettone was created in the 14th century as an opulent, sumptuous, rich special occasion sweet bread so it is only fitting that it has reclaimed its prior status and glory. As panettone has become more known and popular here they are introducing us to the high quality ones appreciated in Italy for centuries. Before that we were just getting industrial made so-so panettone,” Francine Segan, a New York City-based cookbook author and food historian, told The Post. “Even the name is fancy. In the Milan dialect, pan de ton meant ‘luxury cake.’”