Stollen - Daring Baker Challenge December 2010

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.

Unlike a lot of other Daring Baker bloggers, I love fruitcakes. Be it Lions Christmas cake, plum pudding, panettone, raisin toast, mince pies - I love them all. And I love Germans too. So I was very happy to find this month's challenge was Stollen.

Fortunately we had some unseasonably cool weather in Sydney in December, so the baking was not too unpleasant. I followed the host's recipe closely, but I added dried mango, pawpaw and pineapple, used macadamias instead of flaked almonds and added marzipan.


I was quite happy with how it turned out. It had a nice dry-but-not-too-dry texture and a good spicy fruity warmth. It was very good lightly toasted with a cup of coffee.

I encountered a small problem with the homemade marzipan. It decided to be overly sticky, so I had to add it in small pieces, which you can see in the first picture in the collage above. I also found that the melted butter I used to coat the stollen was very yellow and caused the icing sugar to be discolored, no matter how much sugar I added.

Although the wreath was huge, we somehow managed to eat most of it before Christmas. But I did save some to make an extra special Aussie stollen ice cream for our Christmas Eve dinner. I used this recipe and replaced the brown bread with stollen. It was really yummy and made a great southern hemisphere Christmas dessert.

Thank you Penny for this terrific challenge. As I said, I love fruitcake anyway, but I especially enjoyed making stollen and I will make it again and again.

Stollen Ice cream
Adapted from a Gourmet Traveller magazine recipe

12 egg yolks
75g brown sugar
75 g white sugar
500 ml milk
500 ml pouring cream
Zest of 1 orange and 1 lemon
3 cloves
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
100 grams stollen, in very small cubes
1 tbsp melted butter
1 tbsp icing sugar
35 gr toasted hazelnuts, chopped coarsely
75 gr sultanas
80 gr currants
1 tbsp brandy

1. Whisk egg yolks and both sugars together until sugars dissolve.
2. Combine milk, cream, cloves and zests in a medium saucepan and bring to a simmer.
3. Pour milk mixture over egg mixture, stir to combine, then return to saucepan.
4. Cook over a low heat, stirring continuously for 8-10 minutes or until it coats the back of the spoon. Be careful here not to turn the heat up and split the custard. Cool the mixture and fish out the cloves.
5. Heat oven to 180 and toast the stollen cubes for 5 minutes or until light golden.
6. Drizzle the melted butter over the stollen cubes, then sprinkle with the icing sugar and return them to oven for a further 5 minutes. Be careful they don't burn.
7. Add the brandy, hazelnuts, raisins, currants and stollen cubes to the custard mixture and place in the fridge until very cold.
8. Churn in your ice cream maker, according to instructions, approx 30 minutes.