With Christmas this month it was to be expected that the Daring Bakers challenge for December would be festive and we weren’t disappointed as our task was to make stollen.
The 2010 December Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Penny of Sweet Sadie’s Baking. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make Stollen. She adapted a friend’s family recipe and combined it with information from friends, techniques from Peter Reinhart’s book and Martha Stewart’s demonstration.
Stollen is a traditional German Christmas cake (or brioche-like bread, whichever way you look at it) made with eggs, butter, almonds, raisins, currants and candied peel. Stollen originally started out as tasteless bread served during the Advent season. In those days there were restrictions enforced by the Catholic church on what could be used and butter was one of the prohibited items. So the original stolen were made with flour, oats, oil and water.
The local bakers found oil too expensive whereas butter was affordable and available in plenty, so a petition to the Pope finally got the bakers in Dresden the permission to use butter in their stollen for a small fee. The Dresden stollen, perhaps the oldest and most famous of all stollen, is made by folding the dough in half, baked and then dredged with a lot of powdered sugar. This is said to be symbolic of the swaddled infant Jesus and served ususally, on Christmas eve.
Every family has its own treasured recipe for stollen and there many different kinds such as the Mandelstollen (almonds, marzipan), Nußstollen (nuts), Mohnstollen (poppy seed) and the Quarkstollen (curd cheese).
My last post was my take on a very popular south Indian Christmas time favourite, the Plum Cake. Since many of you wouldn’t have read that post, I shall once again mention that typically Christmas style fruit cakes and bread with candied peel just don’t appeal to me. My daughter doesn’t even like raisins will patiently persistently pick out every single one in whatever raisin dotted food she has to eat!
I have never made stollen before and knew I was unlikely to, so thought I’d better do the challenge to see how it was. I halved the recipe, left out the eggs and made some adjustments for this. I also left out the candied peel (I think this is awful stuff!) and used some excellent candied fruit I had on hand. I also chose to make stolleni in the traditional shape rather than as the wreath suggested.
I decided to put some marzipan into my stollen, and decided to flavour it with saffron and cardamom. Here in Goa, cashew nuts are aplenty, so we tend to make marzipan with it instead of almonds. Given below is my recipe for eggless marzipan as well as the recipe I used to make my stollen. So you can see, this stollen is more tropical than German, and it is eggless too.
This recipe makes one small to medium sized stollen. You can find the original detailed recipe here.
A Tropical Stollen - An Egg Free Cashew Marzipan Stollen : Daring Bakers Challenge, December 2010
Ingredients
For the Saffron And Cardamom Egg Free Cashew Marzipan :
- 250 gm cashewnuts broken (approx. 2 cups powder)
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup water
- A few 2 tbsps saffron milk threads soaked in warm (or water)
- 3 pods cardamom , powdered
For Tropical Stollen :
- 1/8 cup water lukewarm
- 2 1/2 tsps active dry yeast
- 1/2 cup milk
- 70 gm unsalted butter (can use salted butter)
- 2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt (if using ed butter)
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1 lemon grated zest of
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp orange extract
- 1/4 cup golden raisins
- 2 tbsps orange juice
- unsalted butter Melted for coating the wreath
- sugar Confectioners u2019 (icing) (powdered) for dusting wreath
Instructions
- To make the marzipan, finely powder the cashewnuts in your food processor or mixer/ grinder. Add some of the sugar, in tsp full (up to about 1/4 cup of the 1 cup of sugar) with the cashew nuts to make powdering easy. Make sure you donu2019t over process the cashewnuts as this will make them greasy and pasty.
- Put the sugar and water in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat to medium and let it simmer for a couple of minutes. Add the powdered cashews and keep stirring till there are no lumps. Keep stirring the mixture till it thickens and add the saffron (with milk) and the cardamom. When the mixture starts coming together as a mass take it off the heat.
- Let it cool till it can be comfortably handled. Then knead the marzipan till soft and smooth. If you feel it is too hard. Add a few drops of warm milk and knead. Keep aside till required. This recipe makes a little bit more marzipan than required for this stollen.
- For the Stollen, start by soaking the raisins in the orange juice for about an hour.
- Then make the dough. Pour the warm water into a small bowl and sprinkle the yeast. After 5 minutes, stir and ensure the yeast has dissolved completely. Put the milk in a pan. Add the butter and melt it over low heat. Then take it off the heat and allow it to cool till it is lukewarm. Add the vanill extract to this.
- I made my dough by hand but you can use a stand mixer if you wish. Stir together the flour, sugar, salt, cinnamon, and lemon zest in a large bowl. Add the proved yeast, and butter-milk mixture and mix together with a wooden spoon. Using your hand, mix further till it comes together and tip it out onto your work surface. Knead the dough till it is soft but not sticky.
- Cover with a kitchen towel and let the dough rest for about 10 minutes. Flatten and pat the dough out with your hand. Evenly sprinkle the soaked raisins and the candied fruit over the surface. Roll the dough up and then knead the dough, using a little flour if necessary. The dough should be soft and satiny, tacky but not sticky. Knead for approximately 8 minutes and shape into a ball.
- Lightly oil a large bowl and place doughin the bowl, rolling around to coat it with the oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight, or up till a week before baking.
- When ready to bake, take the dough out. Let it come to room temperature (about 2 hours). Take a piece of parchment paper which will sit on you baking sheet. Press the dough flat and gently roll into a 1/4u201d rectangle.
- Take the marzipan and if you feel it is too much for the stollen, remove the excess and divide the remainder into two equal parts. Roll each portion into a u201cropeu201d as long as the long side of your stollen dough.
- Place one marzipan rope in the middle of one half of the dough rectangle (lengthwise). Bring the edge of the dough closest to the marzipan over it so that it is covered and the edge rests just beyond the centre of the rectangle. Now place the other marzipan rope on the other half and similarly fold the other edge over the first fold such that it forms an overlap. The edge of this fold should be just short of end of the stollen (lengthwise).Seal the edge so that it will be visible after baking but will not open up in the oven.
- You should have a long roll of dough with the 2 marzipan ropes wrapped inside it, side by side. Place the stollen, using the parchment, on the baking sheet and cover it with a kitchen towel. Allow it to rise till it is 1 1/2 times in size (about 2 hours).
- Bake at 180C (350F) for about 40 to 50 minutes, till golden brown in colour and sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom. Transfer the stollen to a cooling rack and generously brush the top with melted butter, while it is still hot. Dredge a layer of powdered sugar over this immediately and wait for a minute. Add another layer of powdered sugar so the stollen is generously coated.
- Let it cool completely and serve. The stollen is supposed to taste better as it ages. It should, if covered with foil and plastic wrap, store well for 2 weeks at room temperature, a month in the fridge and for 4 months in the freezer.
I'm Aparna and My Diverse Kitchen is my ovo-lacto vegetarian food blog where you'll find recipes, food stories & photography. I've been blogging since 2007 and believe the kitchen, and the dining table (by extension) is really the heart of a home. 
Beautifully done, Aparna!
Love that you used cashew marzipan Aparna. How lucky that you are in cashew country. they are quite steep in our hood. Love your stollen… YUM! Have a wonderful 2011!
Thank you so much for the marzipan recipe. Stollen looks good.
Love that this Stollen has Saffron in it Surely a recipe for keep, Aparna. I too baked it the very first time and loved it. Shall do it with saffron and cardamon the next time.
WOw beautiful looking stollen and loved the addition of saffron and cardamom touch….
your stollen looks so good!:)
Stollen looks beautiful!!!!! aND SAFFRON….hmmmmmmm i can imagine the flavour
Lovely… I keep feeling bad for that egg replacer I never sent you… all because I wanted to make a handmade goody and send it along. But I think you understand 🙂
Prefectly and beautiful looking tropical stollen, awesome!
the sliced stollen looks awesome…
I love cashew and your marzipan sounds delicious. Your Stollen looks gorgeous. I do enjoy fruit breads if they aren’t made with those artificially made fruits full of artificial coloring and flavorings.Happy Holidays to you and your family, too!!
The marzipan does sound good. Sorry you didn’t like it! But then again, it wasn’t my favorite either. It does look good!
Great job with the challenge! I like your little changes and your stollen turned out beautifully!
Brilliant… using the saffron to balance you stolln sweetness,never taste cashew Marzipan before, thank’s for sharing… best wishes for the new year 🙂
I love the idea of saffron cardomom cashew marzipan. Looks lovely.
Wonderful recipe and beautiful presentation !!Hari ChandanaIndian Cuisine
Your stollen looks wonderful, and I love the sound of the cashew saffron marzipan, delicious! Best wishes for the new year too.
Wow, they look soooooooo good, very well done Apu.
Just found this stollen recipe at Pioneer Woman:http://thepioneerwoman.com/tas…
Wow! Saffron and cardammom, now there’s a variation on stollen that I would never have thought of… but it sounds delicious! Leave it to you, a creative genius, to think up such an imaginative Christmas treat. Love it!
wonderful—nice combo of flavours !
looks very yummythanks for sharinghave a nice daybises from FranceDelphine
thanks for the marzipan recipe…..
Sorry you were not a huge fan. It still looks delicious! I on the other hand LOVED it =)
Sorry to hear you didn’t enjoy it that much. Sounds delicious to me though! Saffron and cardamon marzipan sounds wonderfully exotic.
I love the sound of the spiced cashew marzipan- just give me a bowl of that!!! A beautiful job as always….
beautiful new look for the blog aparna…. congratulations and i think that a lot of work went into it! kudos
Very beautiful makeover, Aparna! What’s it with kids? Mine say dry fruits and nuts are nice on their own and I shouldn’t actually pepper my food with them! But Jr.P loves fried cashew bits in anything:).Somehow I have never got around to making stollen. Maybe I should try it next year. I make pflaumenkuchen which is much loved here and fresh fruit filled bread instead of using dried fruits. But, the stollen looks good to me.
I understand. 🙂
Thanks. I had 3 columns earlier too. 🙂
Blog looks beautiful I want three layer in my blog also but have no idea how to do, will mail you once when the busy time is finished here.
Wow! Cashew Marzipan, I could imagine how delicious it would have been. Thank you for sending this gorgeous looking bread to BBD 35.
Congrats on the new look Aparna…looking great! Have you cut over to WP? Happy 2011! xo
No Deeba, didn’t move to WP. Happier with a known devil than an unknown angel! 😀
Aparna, I think your stollen looks fabulous no matter which way it rose! Excellent job! It looks moist and flavorful! And beautiful blog makeover, just beautiful! I think I’ll be contacting Sunita! Hope your holiday season is bright, festive and merry! xo
What a lovely treat, Aparna. I like the slices that show off the marzipan beautifully. Happy holidays!
Great slices and congrats on the new makeover Aparna !!
A tropical stollen would be just lovely and I do like how you made it with two lots of marzipan inside-double the fun! Happy New Year Aparna! 🙂
Wow the new look looks awesome Aparna…great work Suni!
Cashew marzipan sounds lovely! So does the saffron and cardamom in the bread. The slices look so great with the marzipan too.
I just stumbled about your blog – and this recipe sounds awesome! But i was floored to see two great things to spike my interest – recipes and India. I recently discovered how much I enjoy cooking and baking since being a newlywed and India – my husband and I hope to move there someday!Grace & Peace,Andrea M
I love your photos and of course the tropical touch of your Stollen. Well done.
The stollen looks great. I’ve never tasted stollen, and am not too motivated to make it either. But I’d gladly eat this, especially with the double marzipan in it 🙂
An Indian touch to a German dish!Awesome aparna..Looks very tempting..Btw,I love your new templete :)And wishing you and your family a very Happy New Year 🙂
love the new look!! 3 columns rock 🙂 happy new year 🙂