Christmas Stollen

Our December Daring Bakers Challenge was themed for Christmas: a German stollen! I have tried one that my Mum has bought before and I knew I didn't like it so I was a bit apprehensive about completing the challenge. However, after reading the comments from the other bakers I became excited by all their positive reactions and thought I better give it a go, as that is the point of the whole challenge in the first place!

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.

I pretty much followed the recipe exactly. The only change I made was to add orange juice instead of extract (I'm not sure if the even sell extract here, I've never seen it) and also to use mixed fruit (raisins, sultanas, currants, cherries, lemon and orange peel, ginger, craisins) instead of just the raisins, peel and cherries as in the recipe.

I was pretty successful in making it. I decided to be lazy and use the dough hook on my new kitchenaid (xmas pressie to myself!). It rose heaps and I didn't seem to come across any big problems. I guess I wasn't too suprised when I realised I actually really enjoyed the stollen. Everything that is homemade always tastes tons better than when you buy it and it really isn't too time consuming to make. It kinda reminded me of hot cross buns which I have only recently decided that I like as well, haha I've always had a bit of a thing with dried fruit.

Unfortunately I have left the cord for the camera behind. We have travelled to our new house for the Christmas season and had to remember to pack everything to take with us. Somehow the cord managed to be forgotten in our city apartment. I asked my Mum to buy me the Paris Patisseries book and Michel Roux's pastry recipe book for Christmas, and she also managed to forget them and leave them in the apartment as well!! Oh well. I will have to update the post with pictures of my beautiful wreath stollen. But all in all it was an extremely successful challenge and I am sure the stollen will be gobbled up quickly!!!