A week or so ago I made a stollen, according to Wikipedia a kind of "fruit cake" that is popular for Christmas in...

A week or so ago I made a stollen, according to Wikipedia a kind of "fruit cake" that is popular for Christmas in Germany.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stollen

Du Lenowsky wanted to know the result, and perhaps also Heidi Adick: The white rabbits have survived the stollen test, so the recipe should be OK. Here it is:

750g flour
60g fresh yeast (dry works too)
175ml milk
120g brown sugar (I was racist and used white one)
100g almond (ground)
375g soft butter
100g almond (hacked)
300g raisins
125g cranberries (Didn't have the band, skipped this.)
200g marzipan
125g butter for coating
125g powder sugar for coating

Pour all the flour into a pot, make a small depression in the middle for yeast and some warm milk and sugar, mix those to a kind of mud, then let it rest.

When the yeast is awake, mix the rest of the sugar with the milk, then add to the mud, together with butter and ground almond, and make a dough of all of it. Let it rest. (No stress before Christmas, right?)

Now add raisins and hacked almond to the dough, the roll it out a few centimeters thick, in an oval shape. Roll the marzipan out too, a bit smaller than the dough, then put the marzipan on the dough and fold two sides to the center.

I'd say some more folding should be done to spread the marzipan more evenly, except you want it concentrated there. Next time I'll also use a bit more marzipan.

For the last rest the recipe suggested to surround the dough with aluminum foil to prevent it from flattening out too much. Baking is at 160-180C for 50 minutes - at least in theory.

You should leave the stollen in the oven for another 10 minutes after you switched off. Melt the butter, brush it over the stollen, then dust some powder sugar. Wait a moment, then repeat until you have a nice layer of sugar coating.

The finished stollen should be wrapped and left for another week - in theory, again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stollen