So the goal for the holidays, really, was to make stollen from scratch. I made stollen once before, but it was from a Mary Berry mix. Everything was prepped for me so all I had to do was mix everything up. I was determined to find a recipe I could follow that was as close to Mary Berry’s as possible. I searched for a stollen recipe but suprisingly couldn’t find one in my numerous books (to be completely honest, I didn’t really look very far! Ha!). But as luck would have it, Edd Kimber’s book Say It With Cake has a wonderful recipe for stollen.
I added a little tidbit: I soaked the dried fruits in brandy overnight. Makes for an interesting taste. It called for nuts in the recipe, but I didn’t have any to put in so I did without that. And because I like my marzipan spread through out the bread instead of in a big lump in the middle, I rolled my marzipan flat so that it would be distributed throughout the loaf.
I was quite surprised at the size of the stollen though. It came out bigger than I thought! But it did look so pretty when it was dusted with icing sugar!
I was quite pleased with how it’s turned out. The stollen came out beautifully! Am now not too afraid to make breads, aided of course by my Kenwood chef (obviously not paid advertisement, although, I would love it if Kenwood took notice and gave me free stuff! Ha!). I wanted to learn how to make stollen mostly because of my dad. He talks about the time when his entire family lived in Vienna and stollen eventually filters into the conversation. It has always been a dream to bake something that reminded my father of happy times with his parents and siblings. A few more practice sessions so that I can develop my own take on stollen! But until then, Edd Kimber’s recipe with my own tweaks to it will do me just fine!
Yellywelly 