My husband was lucky enough to have a wonderful German grandfather who was a professional baker. Needless to say, it would be pretty impossible for us to recreate his magic in the kitchen, but I really wanted to make a stollen for Tyler this year (since it had been part of his Christmas tradition growing up) and one of my friends with German in-laws was kind enough to send me an authentic recipe by Dr. Oetker vthat she had (thank you, Jeannette!!!)
We followed the recipe, getting out one of the small scales my husband had used for his physics course, setting it to grams, and weighing the ingredients ;-) To veganize it, we simply used Earth Balance instead of the butter. We used soy milk. Instead of the egg, we used 1 TBSP ground flax and 3 TBSP water. The other substitution we made was to soak the raisins in apple juice instead of rum, as we do not have rum on hand and didn't want to buy some just for this recipe. Also, we had no candied lemon peel.
We were really delighted with how it turned out! I thought the dough was really soft and buttery, too much so, so I added a bit of flour so that it held together better but otherwise it mixed up beautifully with the measurements given and we thought it tasted wonderful. Tyler said it was close to what his grandfather's tasted like (wow!) and we even took up a few pieces to the in-laws when we went for a visit after Christmas and my father-in-law was very impressed and said he also thought it was close to what his dad used to make. Hooray! I think we will try to make this a Christmas tradition.
I'm really glad that this worked out so well! Dr. Oetker is the German equivalent of Betty Crocker. I might try this next year. :)
ReplyDeleteKathryn, I am in awe that you could make this. So festive and Christmasy, and not simple at all. It looks amazing and delicious AND professional.
ReplyDeleteJeannette, You did good to pass along the original recipe!
I wouldn't even attempt this but it's tempting because it looks so good.
Thank you again, Jeannette! I am glad to be able to attribute the recipe to Dr. Oetker and will edit my post to reflect his name. That's so cool you have access to his wonderful recipes :->
ReplyDeleteThank you, Lisa. It helped that Tyler assisted in making this. It would be a big task for one person, but is perfect at Christmas time when we have a little extra time off and time together to bake in the kitchen :-)