Stollen

Okay, this is the last of my seasonally inappropriate posts (or, maybe not). I don't really stick to what is "seasonal", I think that good food is good food, so if I can source decent ingredients I'll eat strawberry icecream in December, and Stollen in June!

I do not discriminate when it comes to food, I’ll make anything from anywhere as long as it tastes good. I might bastardise it slightly (don’t hate me!) but I do it with love.

This year, in my culinary trip around Europe, I decided to have a go at Stollen, a traditional German yeast-cake, which is characterised by being stuffed full of marzipan, fruit and nuts. I added dark chocolate chips because I couldn’t help myself. It is *technically* a winter/Christmas thing. It lasts a good while, because it is brushed with melted butter which keeps it dense and moist. However, as with most foods, it tastes reeeeally good warm from the oven.

Ingredients

• 450g plain flour
• 50g ground almonds
• 100g caster sugar
• 10g yeast
• 5g salt
• 150g salted butter
• 250ml milk, lukewarm
• Pinch ground nutmeg and cloves
• 1 tbsp vanilla sugar
• 55g blanched almonds
• 125g dried cranberries
• 75g chocolate chips (optional!)
• Zest of orange and lemon
• 1 tbsp butter, melted
• 225g marzipan
• To finish:
• 1 tbsp butter, melted
• Icing sugar

Method

Place the flour, sugar and almonds in a large bowl.

Camera had no battery during the preparation process, so this is courtesy of my trusty phone..

Add yeast in one side of the bowl and salt in the other, then add in the salted butter and 200ml of the milk and mix together.

Before the milk

Add the remaining milk, little by little and bring together to form a soft dough.

To a generously floured surface, place the dough on top and kneed 6-7 times.

In a separate bowl, add in the nutmeg, cloves, vanilla sugar, almonds, cranberries, chocolate chips and zests and stir together. 

Place the dough on top of this, and knead until all mixed and incorporated.

Cover with cling and set aside for an hour to two, to rise. When doubled, flatten out the dough and roll out to a rectangle of 45x 35cm.

Brush with melted butter, and roll out the marzipan to 35x15cm. Place in the middle of the rolled out stollen loaf.

Roll up to enclose the marzipan in the middle. Place on a lined baking tray, cover with a teatowel and leave to rise for an hour.

Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 190 degrees.

Bake for an hour.

Remove from oven, brush with melted butter and sprinkle over the icing sugar.

Leave to cool on a rack, and slice when cool enough to eat!

Mmmm, fruit and nutty..

Cookie time! Pistachio and Dark Chocolate, and Cranberry with White Chocolate

I have a bit of an obsession with baking cookies.

From the irresistibly chocolately peanutty ones, to the classic choc chip, there is room for them all in my kitchen!

I do have a favourite “baseline” cookie recipe, to which all sorts of extras can be added, but I thought I would branch out and try something else, to see if it improved the finished product, or even if it changed it to a noticeable degree. My usual recipe calls for the butter to be melted first, cooled slightly, and then added to the sugar. This recipe called for the butter to be creamed with sugar, more like a cake recipe.

Chocolate and nuts - perfection

Fruit and chocolate - sweet and flavourful!

These turned out beautifully -  I will be using pistachio a lot more, this is part one of a three part pistachio extravaganza!

Ingredients

• 1 ½ cups plain flour
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp bicarb of soda
• ½ cup butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp vanilla sugar
• 100g pistachios
• 75g chocolate chips
• (I also decided to do white chocolate and cranberry cookies with the same recipe, so I used an additional 75g dried cranberries, and 75g white chocolate)

Method

Preheat oven to 170 degrees

Stir together the flour, salt and leavening agents.

Beat together the butter and sugars for a few minutes until lighter in colour. Add in the vanilla and egg, and beat together again. Gradually add in the flour mixture.

At this  point I halved the mixture into two separate bowls, in one I added the dark chocolate and pistachio, and to the other I added white chocolate and cranberries.

Spoon some mounds of dough onto baking trays lined with greaseproof paper. I usually get six to a sheet.

Bake in the preheated oven for 12 minutes, allow to cool on the baking tray for a few minutes and then transfer to cool on a wire rack.

I may have eaten some when hot from the oven and it was goooood.

Packaged up for a picnic! Finally got new napkins.

Chelsea Buns

Well, it's Sunday, and for me that means only one thing: baking! These fruity and sweet little buns are the perfect way to start your day, the way they make the kitchen smell is a bonus delight.

I think these are an English creation. I’d certainly never heard of them before moving here. A treat for the senses, with a light and filling dough, delicious fruity filling, and sweet sugary topping. Really bloody lovely, and would make a great addition to a chunky afternoon tea spread, or hot from the oven for breakfast.

I kind of see these as a British equivalent of the Swedish cinnamon buns I posted before. My boyfriend, who doesn't get their deliciousness, does not agree. More for me!

You can use whichever fruits or nuts you want in the filling. 

I went with dried apricots and cranberries which went really well with the orange zest. However, something like raisins and walnuts could also work. Raisins are evil, so that’s why I haven’t included them in mine. I will not have them in my house.