I did say that my goal was to bake more so that I could blog more.
The first bake of the year is my take on the traditional stollen. A stollen is described as a yeasted cake containing dried fruit and marzipan. I love stollen! While it is a joy to bake (the smell of dried fruit and mixed peel soaked in brandy is amazing!), sometimes, one needs instant gratification and a store-bought one provides the instant pleasure. I was gutted however, when I found out that Lidl had run out completely of stollen AND stollen bites. I don’t know about anyone else in the UK, but I think Lidl sources great stollen and panettone! I’m not sure where they source their stollen from, but whoever makes that stollen, they have a cracking recipe. The lack of store-bought stollen necessitated the baking (which wasn’t such a difficulty because baking stollen is a pleasure!).
I used Edd Kimber’s stollen recipe from his second book Say It With Cake (I have written about Edd Kimber’s recipes before. I love his blueberry crumble pie and his red velvet cake recipe is to die for!). Edd Kimber’s stollen recipe is probably my favourite recipe from all the stollen recipes so far. I’ve been relatively successful with it (lately!). But this year, instead of rolling the marzipan into a log to fill the center of the loaf, I’ve rolled the dough into a log with the marzipan forming a swirl pattern when the loaf was sliced. I thought it would be good to spread the marzipan all over the bread to distribute it better so that you didn’t get a huge lump in the middle of the bread. And I think it works!
I think this means I’m going to bake stollen again. It doesn’t have to be Christmas for me to bake stollen, does it?
Yellywelly 