The Highlight of Every Christmas - The Classic German Christmas Stollen
The fifth and final installment of 'bake with me for Christmas', and I wrap it up with a classic and yet easy recipe for a German Christmas Stollen.
I myself was intimated by this cake for far too long - but since I can't eat Gluten I had to give it a go a few years ago, and now make it every year, the week before Christmas. All you need is some relatively basic ingredients & two hours of your precious time.
Preparation time about 30minutes
Resting 20minutes + 1 hour
Bake at 200 C (390F) for 50-55min
Ingredients
- 500g gluten-free flour (I used a store bought brand for this)
- 1tbsp Psyllium Husks (this is the binding agent for gluten free breads)
- 1tbsp Xanthan Gum
- 4 tsp Dry Yeast or 14g
- 50g Sugar
- 1 Dash of Salt
- 1tbsp Lemon Zest
- 1 Egg
- 150g Butter (at room temperature)
- 300ml warm Milk
- 80g finely chopped almonds (not ground)
- 30g Candied Orange Peel
- 50g Sukkade (Candied Lemon Peel, both can be found by Dr. Oetker)
- 150g Raisins
- 2tbsp Rum (I did add Almond Extract instead)
- 50g melted Butter
- 100g Icing Sugar
Instructions:
- Mix flour, salt, psyllium husk, Xantham gum
- Create a well in the middle & add the yeast, mixed with 1 tbsp of sugar
- Heat up your milk on the stove to finger temperature
- Add 50ml of the milk to the yeast/ sugar well and let it rise for 20minutes
- Add now the lemon zest, rest of the sugar, eg and 150g of the soft butter to the flour/ yeast mix and mix it for a good 5 minutes, preferably with a kitchen mixer. It's quite a sticky and stiff dough.
- Now add the chopped almonds and candied orange & lemon peels + the rum or almond extract.
- Form the dough to dough to a bread loaf and let rest, covered, in a warm and draft-free space. (This is a good indicator - the form should hold itself, if it doesn't something went wrong - Sorry!)
- Bake the Stollen at 200 degrees Celsius (390F) for about 50-55minutes - I always cover it with aluminum foil half way through to keep an even color.
- In the meantime, you can melt the 50g butter on the stove.
- When the Stollen comes out of the oven, brush the melted butter of the whole loaf and add plenty of Icing sugar - like a lot!
This cake is by no doubt getting better with age, so wrap it up in aluminum foil to keep it for a while and make it ahead of time.
Enjoy & Merry Christmas!
