Cuisine: English

A Stollen, also „Christstollen“ is a traditional german fruit cake, made for christmas. I’ve always enjoyed the stollen, made by my friend charlottes mother, so one day I asked for the recipe. And here it is. Last year I tried it for the first time, and it turned out very nice. The recipe isn’t very difficult, but you need some time and loads of raisins and butter/margarine.

The stollen has to sit for a few weeks, so now really is the time to bake it. Traditionally are raisins, currants, candied lemon and orange peel and almond slivers used in the dough, but you can exchange parts of the dried fruit for dried cranberries, aronia or dates. I didn’t have any currants, so I used dates instead.

The recipe is for one (giant) stollen, but charlottes mother already wrote in her recipe, that she divides the dough in two parts for two „normal“ sized stollen.

The day before, mix the dried fruit with the almond slivers, add the grated lemon peel. Pour the rum and lemon juice over the mixture and stir. Soak covered overnight, stirring a few times.

The next day sieve the flour in a big bowl (usually I skip the sieving part, … don’t know weather it makes a difference). Make a well in the center. Dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm milk with one tbsp sugar, pour it in the well, and carefully mix some of the flour in the yeast-milk mixture with a fork. Cover with a clean towel and let rise in a warm place for 15 min.

Now work all of the ingredients in the bowl very well together, until you get an elastic dough. Mix in the fruit-almond-mix and knead until everything is evenly mixed, cover and let rise again for 30 min. I did it in my kitchen aid, the bowl was really full, but it worked.

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Halve the dough and shape into stollen. The recipe describes it as follows:“roll out quite thick, press the rolling pin into the pin to form a longish cavity and fold one half over the other.“

Put every stollen on a greased, floured baking sheet and wrap with a collar, made out of folded aluminium foil. Let it rise covered for the last time for 15 min. Bake in the oven one after the other for 90 min. Check after 30 min, if the top browns too fast. Cover with aluminium foil if it does.
Check for hte first time after 60 min with a wooden skewer, inserted into the stollen. If it comes out clean, the stollen is done. If there are crumbs on the skewer, check again after 15 min until done.

 

 

 

Remove from the oven and spread with butter/margarine and sieve loads of icing sugar on top. Repeat after 15 min. This will make a kind of glazing.

Cool the stollen completely, then wrap it in aluminium foil and store it for at least two weeks. Mine ary waiting in the cupboard right now :-)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I baked this cake already twice in the last few weeks, because it is so delicious. The first time I added a little bit too much milk, so the cake was moist, and the quinces went all the way down to the bottom, but it was still very delicious.
It is very surprising to me, that the combination of saffron and quince is so exquisite.
As always you have to cook the quince first, but the rest is kind of a regular pound cake, so very easy, I would say.

First peel, core and cut the quinces. Put them with the 150 g sugar, the water and the big pinch of saffron in a small pan. Bring to a boil and let simmer for 8 min or until the quinces are soft. I think medium to low heat should do the job. You don’t want the quinces to fall apart. Put to the side and let cool down, while you proceed with the rest.
Melt the butter/margarine, preheat the oven to 175°C.
Fot the batter, whip the butter/margarine with 50 g of the remaining sugar until foamy and pale, add the eggs, one after the other or the prepared egg replacer.
Then add the flour, baking powder, salt and starch. Now you will have a quite firm batter. The sugar sirop of the quinces should be cool enough by now, to add it to the batter without „cooking“ the eggs. So add the sirop while stirring. If the batter needs more liquid, add milk until you get a smooth, gooey batter. Check for sweetness, if you think it needs more sugar, add again 25 g sugar.

Grease your springform tin (23cm diameter), I usually do this by using a butter/margarine paper. There is always left enough grease for the cake tin. Sometimes I need two papers. Since my mother showed me this trick, I always stash my butter/margarine papers in the fridge.
Fill in the batter, sprinkle the quince cubes on top and put the cake in the oven for 60 min.
If your oven doesn’t heat evenly it might help to rotate the cake after 30 min for 180°.
Check after 50 min with a wooden skewer, if the cake is already done. If no crumbs or batter stick on the cake you can get it out of the oven.