German Christmas Stollen

Stollen, a German Christmas fruit cake, is one of my fondest memories of my childhood in Germany. I remember my grandmother and mother baking huge "striezel" (often used as a synonym for stollen) the first week of December. Both would spend hours in the kitchen preparing ingredients, chopping nuts and cleaning raisins.

Many traditional German recipes call for currants and raisins, both candied lemon and orange peel and very often marzipan. I prefer to use only currants and equal amounts of lemon and orange peel.  Since I am not a fan of marzipan I always use my mother's recipe which doesn't call for it.

Ingredients:
4 cups all-purpose flour
4 tsp baking powder
2/3 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
a pinch of salt
1/4 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp rum extract
1/8 tsp ground cardamon
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
2 eggs
6 oz butter, cold, cut into small pieces
8 oz Quark (similar to farmer's cheese, available at German gourmet food stores and at some Whole Foods markets)
1 cup currants, cleaned
4.5 oz ground almonds
1 oz each of candied orange and lemon peel

• Preheat oven to 500° F, then reduce heat to 375° F.
• Mix flour and baking powder and sift into a large bowl. Make a well in the center.
• Add sugar, vanilla extract, salt, almond and rum extracts, cardamon, nutmeg and two eggs. Use some of the flour from the side of the bowl and knead everything into a thick dough.
• Place butter, Quark, currants, candied lemon and orange peel on top of dough and knead everything together.You may add a little bit of flour if the dough is too sticky.
• Divide the dough into two balls and shape each ball into a log.
• Place both stollen on a baking sheet lined with baking paper.
• Bake at 375° F for 50-60 minutes. Brush hot stollen with 4 tbsp of melted butter and immediately sift powdered sugar over top to cover completely. Let cool.
• To store, wrap stollen tightly in aluminum foil and store in refrigerator. It also freezes well wrapped in aluminum foil.