This 100% Whole Wheat Christmas Stollen heralds my Holiday baking. I am already feeling behind judging by my clicking around. Making a Christmas cookie list is still on my to-do list.
However, the Holiday CD's have been spiraling for six days, and we're enjoying our morning coffee from Christmas mugs.I do believe I have had Stollen before, one given to us from Germany. If I am recalling correctly, the German one was more like a dense cake, while ours is, of course, more like bread.
I used dried cherries and currants in mine, orange juice instead of brandy (did anyone try tea?), and slivered almonds. Oh, and an extra dose of salt by mistake, which thankfully was undetectable.
I think this needed the brandy and almond paste. I had a feeling about that, but I wanted to stick with ingredients I'd use more often. If I ever make this again, I would at the very least toast the almonds, and perhaps chop or grind them.Happy Holidays to you all! Will we really not be back again until the New Year? It will be our one year anniversary! I'll miss you, baker friends, but I hope you'll stop by because I plan to be here several more times before Santa comes.
Looks nice. Happy Holidays back to you from Oz.
ReplyDeleteGreat job. I don't know that the brandy is that noticeable in the small amount used, but the marzipan added a lot.
ReplyDeleteVery nice looking Stollen!
ReplyDeleteDark Rum would probably add a bit more flavor then the brandy. I use dark rum is several recipes and we like it very much.
The tea sounds interesting and I know more and more people are cooking and baking with it, although I've not tried it YET!
Happy holidays to you too. Don't worry about us not keeping in touch, we still have the dicussion group and you can always post the URL to anything you would like us to see.
Good tips, everyone! I think I'll use the brandy and pick up some almond paste. Sounds like the almond paste is better than the almonds.
ReplyDeleteGood looking stollen!! My first thought was to use the almonds only, but I first used almond paste this paste year in some apricot shortbread bars and I really like the almond paste. If you use almond paste and have some leftover it freezes well for at least 3 months.
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