Christmas Stollen

This traditional Christmas cake is yeast based and so lighter than the usual rich fruit cake. This recipe is nice and straight forward to do if you have a bread maker, but still not too complex if you make it by hand.

Ingredients:

• 1 tsp fast action dried yeast
• 350g strong white flour
• 50g caster sugar
• 1/3 tsp salt
• 150ml milk
• 1 large egg
• 110g butter, at room temperature, cut into cubes
• 25g almonds, finely chopped
• 25g candied peel
• 50g currants
• 50g sultanas
• 6 glace cherries, cut into quarters
• 45g ready to eat apricots, cut into small pieces
• 225g pre-made marzipan
• 100g icing sugar
• 1 tbsp lemon juice

Method:

1. If using a bread maker than add the yeast the bread maker pan first, followed by the flour, sugar and salt.
2. Beat the egg in a bowl with the milk and add to the flour mixture.
3. Add the butter, almonds and candied peel.
4. If your bread maker has a nut dispenser which can add nuts later on in the process then place the currents, sultanas, cherries and apricots into that. If not then you'll need to fold these into the dough afterwards.
5. Set the bread maker going on a dough with nut dispenser setting.
6. If you're not using a bread maker then make the dough using the following steps:
   1. Put the yeast, flour, sugar and salt into a mixing bowl.
   2. Add the milk, butter and egg.
   3. Kneed into a moist dough.
   4. Add the almonds and candided peel to the dough and kneed them into it.
   5. Leave it to rise in a warm place for an hour.
   6. Kneed the dough to knock some of the air out if it and then add in the remaining fruit and kneed well.
   7. Return to a warm place for a further hour.
7. Once the dough is done pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees.
8. Carefully roll out the dough so that it's about 1 cm thick, or at least large enough so that it's roughly a square covering the baking tray you are going to use to bake it.
9. Put a sheet of greaseproof paper onto the baking tray.
10. Use your hands to roll the marzipan into a long sausage shape which is almost as long as the rolled out dough.
11. Place the marzipan in the middle of the dough and fold over the third of one side, followed by the third from the other side.
12. Place in the oven and bake for 30 to 35 minutes. If the stollen is almost the size of your oven then it's probably worth checking it's cooking evenly after 20 minutes and turning it by 180 degrees if it's not cooking evenly.
13. While the stollen cooks in the oven, mix the icing sugar and lemon juice with a knife until it's a spreadable icing consistency.
14. Once it's cooked, let the stollen rest on the side for 5 to 10 minutes.
15. Mix up the icing again with the knife to get it to be a bit more runny and then spread over the top of the stollen.
16. Leave icing to set and for the stollen to cool.
17. Enjoy slices of stollen with coffee or a glass of mulled wine.