Shtolen: a recipe for a German Christmas treat

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Each country has its own traditional daily and festive dishes. Especially people appreciate, cherish and pass on from generation to generation dishes for a variety of special occasions. And if, for example, the British are proud of their puddings, assuring that they don’t know how to cook them correctly anywhere else, then in Germany adits are held in high esteem. Its recipe, it must be admitted, is much less pretentious and difficult to perform than the favorite delicacy of the British. But the result will be no worse. Cooking options allow you to choose the German adit, the recipe of which is within your power. The only drawback of this dish is the fact that it must be prepared long before the upcoming holiday.

Stolen for Christmas

In Germany, this dish is traditionally prepared for Christmas. Indeed, in this country, as well as throughout Europe, this holiday is,perhaps the most important of the year. But even on the eve of any other celebration, it is quite possible to prepare a German Christmas adit. The recipe for this dish involves the use of fillings. You can prepare it as follows: 50 grams of candied orange or lemon peels are crushed and mixed with the same amount of ground almonds and medium-sized raisins. A quarter kilogram of flour is sifted, combined with a teaspoon of baking powder, the same volume of rum, a package of vanilla, margarine or butter (150 grams), an egg and three large spoons of sugar. The dough is whipped with a mixer: first at a low speed, and as it is stirred, it should be increased. Then the filling is added. The dough is divided into parts, from each a semblance of a loaf is formed. The baking sheet is lined with baking paper, on which future adits are laid out. In a preheated oven, small cupcakes should be baked for about 12 minutes. The larger the adits, the longer they should be kept in the oven. This cooking option can be called fast. Next, we will look at more complex and time-consuming recipes.

Curd variant

This is a more "long" adit: the recipe involves soaking a quarter kilo of dried fruits (cherries, raisins) and candied fruit in rum a couple of days before cooking. For the dough, a pack of butter is softened and whipped with a glass (with a slide) of sugar. 2 eggs are introduced into the mass in turn. Then add 250 g of cottage cheese, vanilla, zest and juice from one lemon. Half a kilo of sifted flour is mixed with a packbaking powder and added to the curd. A glass of chopped almonds, candied fruits and dried fruits are poured into the kneaded dough. From this amount of dough, 2-3 "loaves" are formed. They turn out quite large, so they will bake for about an hour. Until they have cooled, you should grease them with melted butter and sprinkle with powder. When the cupcakes have cooled, they should be wrapped first in parchment, and then in a bag. This is how a ripening Christmas adit is prepared: the recipe suggests baking it two weeks before the holiday so that it matures. However, after a couple of days, the cupcake is already quite possible to eat.

Dresden adit

The cooking process of this dish is also not fast. So, it is proposed to soak the raisins for adits for a day in orange juice (you can also use alcohol if desired), and the dough will need yeast. You can use your favorite and proven recipe, just replace margarine or vegetable oil with butter in it. The dough will rise a little longer, but it will be more elastic. As spices, it is supposed to add cardamom in addition to vanilla. While kneading the dough, raisins are carefully introduced. When the dough has finally come up, marzipan rolled up with sausage is wrapped in it. By the way, marzipan is necessarily included in the Dresden adit. The recipe for this dish can also be varied using various ingredients (for example, add cherries instead of raisins). However, marzipan must be included in its composition. The edges of the dough are pinched and leveled. Shtolen is placed on parchment, covered with a toweland left to rise for an hour and a half or two, after which it is smeared with milk and sent to the oven for half an hour. At the end, pastries sprinkled with powdered sugar are placed in a container and exposed to the cold to “ripen”.

Stolen mini

These cupcakes are usually made quite large and cut across when served. However, you can also bake a small, "disposable" adit. You can choose any dough recipe, but German housewives advise using cottage cheese: in tightly closed containers, such pastries can be stored for two weeks after ripening and will not lose their softness. When the dough is ready, it is divided in half, rolled into sausages, cut into small circles, which are subsequently folded into balls. What you need to pay attention to when baking is the distance between the cupcakes: when baking, they increase and can stick together. But during storage, this danger does not threaten them.

Try to bake an adit for the next holiday - you already know the recipe, and not just one, but its implementation depends only on your diligence.