German Stollen

4 Stollen (double recipe)

Stollen is a traditional German Christmas bread full of nuts, candied fruit and raisins with a marzipan filling.  Most recipes use yeast, mine calls for Quark and baking powder and I replaced the candied fruits and raisins with dried cranberries.

Ingredients:

• 500g flour
• 1tblsp baking powder
• 275g unsalted butter
• 200g sugar
• a few drops vanilla extract or a packet of vanilla sugar
• pinch salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 tblsp rum
• grated fresh lemon peel
• 1/4 tsp cardamom and nutmeg
• 250g quark (you can substitute with Greek yoghurt)
• 50g pistachios
• 100g walnut pieces
• 100g dried cranberries
• 125g marzipan
• 2 tsp icing sugar

Mix flour and 175g soft butter, add eggs, sugar, baking powder, vanilla, salt, eggs, rum, lemon peel, quark, nuts and cranberries and mix to a dough ball.  Gently roll dough out to form an oval.  With the marzipan form a log and place on dough.  fold dough over to make a loaf.

Bake at 175C in preheated oven for 1 hours (or if you are making two smaller loafs, bake 40min).  Remove from oven and immediately brush with remaining butter and sprinkle with icing sugar.  Let cool completely.  Can be eaten fresh or wrapped in foil and stored for a week.