Now it’s time for a second recipe using the home made marzipan, the home made stollen. This fruited loaf with marzipan filling is eaten in The Netherlands traditionally at 3 times in the year: Christmas, Easter and also at a third Christian festival, called Pinksteren, I am, after 14 years in the UK, still unsure what this relates to in the UK. It is, I believe, the Sunday and Monday after ascension Thursday.
Although you can nowadays also buy stollen in the shops (especially LIDL and ALDI seem to do them at Christmas), home made ones are usually even nicer.
For this recipe you need:
Home made marzipan (recipe 1 on my blog)
450 grams strong white flour
85 grams of oil or unsalted butter
85 grams of sugar
7 grams of salt
1 sachet of dry yeast (Allinson for instance)
200 ml of milk
1 large egg (or 2 smaller ones)
85 grams of glace cherries
75-150 grams of mixed fruit, raisins, sultanas or currants
(it is also nice to put in a bit of cinnamon or mixed spice and some nuts)
There are 2 ways of doing this, the easy one and the more tricky one, in other words using a bread maker or by hand. I usually use my bread maker to prepare the dough and set it to the dough setting. The fruit can then be added at the designated time by the bread maker or after the programme has finished by hand.
If doing it by hand you will need to keep some timings of kneading the dough and letting it rest. Below is the method of doing it by hand set out.
Preparing the dough:
Mix the salt, the egg and the oil or butter with the flour to make the dough. (add cinnamon or mixed spice if you like)
Warm the milk and let it cool to about 32 Celsius. Mix in the sugar and the yeast and put it in with the dough mixture.
Knead the dough well until a smooth mixture has developed (it is stickier than usual bread dough due to the high sugar content). Usually knead for about 10 minutes.
Leave to rest for 15 minutes.
Knead again for about 10 minutes and leave to rest for another 15 minutes.
Now add the raisins/mixed fruit/sultanas/glace cherries. Knead them in and once this is done the dough is ready to be used further after leaving it to rest for 10 minutes.
Making the stollen:
In the mean time (during the last resting period) roll the marzipan out to a finger shaped roll of around 25 cm length. (be prepared to lick your fingers afterwards as this is very sticky work, yum, yum)
Roll out the dough with a rolling pin. Place the marzipan on the dough and roll the dough around it. Now place it in a pre heated oven, 190 Celsius, gas mark 6 for 25 minutes.
Leave the stollen to cool and give it a dusting of icing sugar.
Ready and ENJOY!
Hope you will enjoy this recipe, we all love it. I will be adding some further recipes in the near future, so do keep a look out if you are interested.
Love,
Jo.
