Expensive? How? The 2 panettones I have in the oven right now consist of
milk
yeast
flour
eggs
butter
sugar
candied fruit & raisins
vanilla
lemon zest
2 Tbs. rum
No cocoa butter. In fact, I don't believe I've ever seen a panettone recipe that calls for cocoa butter, although I'm sure there may be one out there. And the candied fruits tend to be on sale this time of the year. I even stock up after the December holiday when the stores are dumping them. This time I macerated the fruit in 1/2 c. rum, but if you want to cut that cost you could simply rinse the candied fruit and plump the raisins in hot water. It still works very well.
Is it a PIA to make? Maybe, if you don't have a stand mixer, try to do the Peter Reinhart recipe, or didn't time yourself well. The recipe I use takes about 6 hours, but most of it is rising time.
Bread baking isn't for everyone so I understand if you wouldn't want to be bothered with it. But it certainly isn't expensive or terribly difficult. In fact, it isn't all that different from making challah.
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