Stollen Cake

Today I am cheating a little bit. I already offered this recipe for this year's MoFo, but as it really is a traditional Christmas pastry and is only eaten around Christmas I have to come up with it again. And I am doing a two weeks detox at the moment (today's my last day) and so I wasn't able to cook or bake or something and my daily broth recipes were not that spectacular.


If you are into German pastry you really have to try this one. Even though its origin is Eastern Germany stollen cake can be found everywhere else, too. Every bakery produces one and there are thousands and thousands of variations out there, suitable for everyone.
This cake needs some time to infuse. I made my first load of stollen cake for MoFo and gave them away to family and friends and all of them told me it was really perfect (and they are far from being uncritical, especially as they still cannot believe vegan stuff could taste somehow better than a blank sheet of paper).
I still tell you fresh cranberries work better than raisins, as they taste better and add some extra liquid to a usually dry dough, but raisins would be the traditional version. If you do not hate raisins as I do you may even use both.

Stollen Cake

what you need: (10 small = 4 large/usual)

dough:
1kg wheat flour (550)

250ml plant milk 

150g sugar

300g buttery marge

2 soy eggs

2 blocks of yeast (~90g)

2 tbsp gingerbread condiment

a pinch of salt

100g candied orange peel (1 used ~20g as I don't like it that much)
100g candied lemon peel (again only ~20g)
250g raisins (I used fresh cranberries instead), pickled in rum

150g chopped almonds

optional:

dried fruits

marzipan
grated poppy seeds (mixed with a few tbsp plant cream)




1.
prepare dough, allow to rise for at least 1h

2. 
add almonds, dried fruits (optional), raisins; 
then fill flattened dough pieces with marzipan rolls/poppy seeds/etc. and roll, starting with the smaller side

3.
allow stollen to rise for 10 more minutes (important: not longer!), preheat oven to 170°C (important, too), otherwise it will lose its shape

4.
bake for ~25-30min (small ones, large ones require ~45min)

5.
remove from the oven, grease with warm marge sprinkle with icing sugar and wrap into aluminium foil;
allow to infuse for a few days (at least about 7), then unwrap and spread a thick layer of icing sugar over it