Stollen

Alright, so I know I’m starting the new year with a distinctly Christmassy recipe, but I made a few stollens over Christmas and I think I’ve perfected my recipe. So I have to share it with you now in case I’ve forgotten it or lost my notes by December. Besides, stollen is so tasty that I think it should be a year round treat anyway. Stollen has become a Christmas staple in recent years. Hailing from Germany, it’s a gorgeously fruity, marzipan-y yeasted bread-cake thing. I prefer it to Christmas cake as it is lovely and fruity but not too dark. It’s an enriched dough but it’s not hard to make, I promise. My version is adapted from one by Paul Hollywood.

You need:

• 500g strong white flour
• handful of plain flour
• 100g caster sugar
• 10g fast action yeast
• 10g salt
• 150g unsalted butter, softened
• 250ml whole milk
• 1 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp almond extract
• 100g flaked almonds
• 380g luxury mixed fruit (I used an M&S one that was really juicy and contained peel – if you can afford to buy some nice moist fruit, it will help make a particularly good stollen)
• 50g glacé cherries
• 25g butter, melted
• 325g marzipan
• another 25g butter, melted
• icing sugar for dusting

1. First, prepare your fruit, nuts, and spices. Pop the mixed fruit in a mixing bowl with the flaked almonds. Chop up the glacé cherries and add them in. Add the cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, almond essence, and vanilla and stir the lot until it’s well mixed and set aside.
2. Pop the flour and sugar in a large mixing bowl.
3. Add the salt and yeast on opposite sides of the bowl.
4. Add the butter and 2/3 of the milk and stir together. Get yours hands in there and squish it up a bit so that the butter becomes evenly distributed. Add the rest of the milk and bring together until you have a dough.
5. Flour a clean surface and turn the dough out. If your dough is quite wet, you may need a fair amount of flour. Knead for around 7 minutes, until the dough is smooth and pliable. I set a timer to make sure I gave it a proper kneading.
6. Now, put the fruity mix into your large bowl and put the dough on top. Knead all the fruit into the dough, folding it over and over until it’s evenly distributed in the dough. The dough may seem a bit wet at this stage, but that’s ok. When everything is evenly combined, cover the bowl with cling film and leave it in a warm place to rise for 1 1/2 – 2 hours. You want it to be roughly double in size.
7. Shortly before you take your dough out of its warm place, take 225g of your marzipan and roll out out on a flat surface. You want it to be just a bit smaller than an A4 piece of paper.
8. When the dough has risen, knock it back and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Using your hands, flatted it out into a rectangle, around 45cm x 35cm in size. Brush the dough with the first lot of melted butter and place the marzipan on top. Now take the rest of the marzipan and roll out into a sausage shape. Place it on the edge of the flattened marzipan and then tightly roll up the dough until you have a lovely big doughy log. Tuck the ends in as you go so that it’s neat.

   

9. Place on a baking sheet lined with baking parchment, cover with cling film, and leave in the warm place to rise for an hour. It may not quite double in size but it will get bigger. To see if it’s proved enough, you can gently poke it in a surreptitious place – if the dent stays in and the dough doesn’t spring back, it has proved enough.
10. Heat an oven to 190°c (170 if you have a fan oven) and bake for 50 mins to an hour. It will go fairly dark but if it looks like it’s burning, cover it with foil mid-way through. It should be evenly brown and should sound a bit hollow when you tap the bottom.
11. As soon as you get it out of the oven, brush it with the second lot of melted butter and dust generously with icing sugar.
12. Leave to cool on a cooling rack and serve cold!

Make sure you wrap it up well and it will keep for 3-4 days.