Christmas Stollen from Great Aunt Margot from Dresden

Ingredients for 1 servings:

• 1 kg flour
• 250 g butter
• 150 g lard
• 5 cubes of yeast, 42 g each
• 250 ml milk, lukewarm
• 150 g sugar
• 150 g almonds, chopped or ground
• 1 bottle of bitter almond oil
• 50 g candied lemon peel
• 50 g candied orange peel
• 1 bag of lemon zest
• 1 lemon(s)
• ½ tsp salt
• 600 g raisins
• ½ cup rum, approx. 75 ml
• 250 g clarified butter
• 200 g sugar, rather less
• 200 g icing sugar, more if needed

Instructions

Working time approx. 1 hour 20 minutes; Rest time approx. 1 hour 30 minutes; Cooking/baking time approx. 1 hour 15 minutes; Total time approx. 4 hours 5 minutes

Weigh all ingredients the day before and bring to room temperature. Sort, wash, and dry the raisins, and soak them in rum. You can also add candied orange and lemon peel, and the almonds. Sift all the flour into a large bowl and make a well in the center. Pour 2/3 of the milk into the well and dissolve the yeast in it. Make a pre-dough with a little flour. Cover and let rise for 1/2 hour. Then add all the ingredients except the almonds and raisins and knead everything into a dough. Don’t forget the salt. Knead in the raisins and almonds. Add the remaining milk as needed. Let rise for about 1 hour. Knead again and hit the counter vigorously. Let rest for 1/2 hour. Preheat the oven to 250°C (top/bottom heat). Form 2 (preferably 4) stollen, place each on its own baking paper, pierce both sides deeply several times (I use a metal skewer because it’s thicker than roulade pins), and let rest for another 30 minutes. Loosely secure the top of each piece of baking paper with a stapler. Reduce the oven to 160°C fan/convection oven and bake the stollen on the middle rack for about 1 hour 15 minutes. For 4 smaller stollen, 1 hour is enough. The baking paper keeps the stollen fairly light, and the raisins on the surface don’t burn. Carefully remove the staples. If the stollen still looks too light in the end, you can touch up the color with a few minutes of fan/convection oven heat. Pierce the warm stollen deeply several times with a metal skewer, vertically and diagonally on all sides, and brush with melted clarified butter. The next day, butter again and then sprinkle with a layer of sugar. Spread butter and powdered sugar on top in several alternating layers. Adjust the amount if necessary. Once cooled, store the stollen in an airtight container and store for 4 weeks. After unpacking, sift more powdered sugar over the top if needed. You can bake the stollen as early as early October. The longer they sit, the better.