# New Year's Adventure Christmas stollen is a traditional holiday treat in Germany. Stollens are made a few weeks before Christmas and left to mature. For the holiday, the cupcakes are soaked in spices and become incredibly tasty. Real holiday magic! Make this fragrant Christmas cupcake for your loved ones!
Ingredients: cognac, raisins, candied fruits, dried cranberries, peeled hazelnuts, peeled almonds, Zest and juice of 1 lemon (🍋 small, Butter, sugar, soft cottage cheese 9 -18%, fresh chicken egg, wheat flour, baking powder, Vanilla or vanillin
Cooking method:
Pour brandy over raisins, cranberries and candied fruits overnight (12-48 hours). The cognac should be completely absorbed. Rinse the lemon. Grate the zest from the lemon through a fine grater. Use only the yellow citrus portion. Note that the white shell is bitter. Cut the lemon in half, squeeze out the juice and strain. Toss the juice with the zest. Lemon is said to spoil baked goods. But I added zest and some juice to the dough.
Remove the butter from the refrigerator to soften. Transfer the soft butter to a bowl, add sugar and vanilla to it. Rub the ingredients with a spoon. Then beat the mass with a mixer until a light cream. Add eggs (room temperature) to the cream and continue beating the mixture with a mixer on high speed until smooth. If you add cold eggs to the mass, then its texture will be lumpy, and the dessert itself will not be very tender.
Send cottage cheese to the cream and mix all the ingredients with a mixer again. Then add lemon juice with zest and beat again.
Pour flour, salt and baking powder into a bowl. Mix everything and sift the mixture through a sieve into an empty bowl. This must be done to saturate the flour with oxygen. In this case, the baking will be more magnificent.
Chop the nuts with a knife, but not very finely. Stir in flour. If possible, use different varieties of nuts. So the filling will come out richer, and it will look more beautiful.
Gradually add a dry mixture of flour, baking powder and nuts to the oil composition. Be sure to mix everything with a spoon, not with your hands. Otherwise, the butter will start to melt from their heat. Do not add excess flour to the dough, although it is sticky. Otherwise, the dessert will turn out to be rough. The dough should be soft but fairly dry.
Transfer the mixture to a floured table. Slightly flatten the mass, pour the mixture of candied fruits and alcohol onto the dough, draining the excess liquid. Stir the filling into the dough quickly. You don't need to knead for a long time.
Form the dough into a ball. Cover with cling film and let it brew in a cold place for 1.5 - 2 hours, or preferably a day. Once ripe, place the dough on a floured work surface. Form an oval out of the ball and divide it into 2 parts. Use them to make oval cakes about 3 cm thick. Step back from the edge by 1/3 and draw a line along the shape with the edge of your palm.
Place the smaller part of the oval cake on top of the larger one (fold one on top of the other, as if you were swaddling a baby) and round the sides with your hands. So the diaper has turned out. When baking, the dough will go in breadth, so shape it in height. Transfer to a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Bake in an oven preheated to 180 ° C for 70-80 minutes. Cover with foil if the top will burn. Check readiness with a wooden skewer. If it remains dry, then the treat is ready. Remove the shtollens from the oven and immediately brush them hot with melted butter. Then generously sprinkle the surface and sides with powdered sugar (through a strainer).
Sprinkle in the icing sugar until the butter stops showing through the sugar. It takes a lot of powdered sugar so that the layer is about 8 mm.
Allow the baked goods to cool in a sweet powder at room temperature. Then wrap in parchment, it will help to distribute moisture in the dessert, then in foil and a bag. They will not let the treat dry out. Keep it in this position in a cool dark place (kitchen cabinet or refrigerator, top shelf) for 3-4 weeks.
👉I bake curd stollen 1-2 days before Christmas, hold for 2-3 weeks, I consider it unsafe.
☝️In Germany itself, this cake is called "last minute stollen". This means that it NEVER NEEDED to be cooked in advance, several weeks before the holiday: it can be cooked 1-2 days before Christmas or eaten immediately after baking! Reach out at the appointed hour and enjoy. Happy Holidays!
By the way, about lemon 🍋 Some sources write that ingredients taken from fresh lemon contribute to spoilage of baked goods, i.e. baked goods with them cannot be stored for a long time. It quickly becomes inedible, acquires an unpleasant taste and aroma, and can become moldy.
Christmas stollen is a traditional holiday treat in Germany. The first mention of it dates back to 1329. Then this pastry was cooked on the Nativity Fast in water with the addition of rapeseed oil. Later, the recipe changed, and now there are many variations of this holiday baked goods. In different parts of Germany you can find butter stollen, almond, curd.
Each of the types has a different filling, but the molding remains unchanged. Stollen, with its shape and white color, should resemble the Christ-baby wrapped in swaddling clothes.