This vegan marzipan stollen is a simple and (relatively) quick way to create a Christmas classic. It’s flavoured with plenty of spices and fruits, and filled with a subtly almondy home-made marzipan.
The challenge with stollen can be to curb your natural inclination to make all baked goods as light and airy as possible. This isn’t one of the heavier stollen recipes (the dough will at least double in size), in part because it’s a little lower in fat. It is still an enriched, dense, fruited loaf with those thin, stretched air pockets you expect to see, and traditional German stollen flavours.
I’ve focussed on lemon and cardamom as the primary flavours, which make for a really aromatic stollen. Cranberries are included for colour and a bit of extra tanginess.
The recipe calls for a small amount of orange juice, so a Christmas clementine or satsuma is perfect.
vegan marzipan stollen…
ingredients
- 280 g strong white flour
- 2 tsp dried yeast
- 120 ml oat (or other non-dairy) milk
- zest of a small lemon plus 2 tbsp juice
- 50 g white/golden sugar
- 80 g vegan margarine, plus 1 tbsp for glazing
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 60 g raisins
- 30 g cranberries
- 30 g lemon (or mixed) candied peel
- 5 green cardamom pods
- 3/4 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp allspice (or use nutmeg with a pinch of cloves)
- 2 tbsp orange/clementine juice
- 2 tbsp icing (confectioner’s) sugar for dusting
for the marzipan
- 100 g ground almonds
- 40 g icing (confectioner’s) sugar
- 1 to 2 tbsp orange/clementine juice
- scant 1/2 tsp almond extract
method
- Warm the milk in a small jug or bowl (no hotter than body temperature). Add one teaspoon of the sugar and stir in the yeast. Set aside for 10 minutes or so until it forms a thick frothy top.
- Crack the cardamom pods using a pestle and mortar or with the flat of a large knife, remove the seeds and then crush those to a gritty powder. Discard the pods.
- Place the flour, remaining sugar and salt in a large bowl, and add the lemon zest, cardamom and other spices. Stir through.
- Make a well in the centre of the flour and add the margarine, milk mixture and lemon juice. Mix with a metal spoon or fork until it has come together sufficiently to knead with your hands.
- Transfer the dough to a board and knead for ten minutes. You may not need any flour to stop it sticking to the board but add a bit if necessary.
- Place the dough in a clean, lightly oiled bowl, cover with clingfilm or a damp cloth, and leave it in a warm place to prove for around two hours until it has roughly doubled in size. The time will depend on the temperature – on a cold winter day, you could prove it in the oven on a very low setting (around 25 degrees C).
- While the dough is proving, measure the fruit into a bowl and stir through two tablespoons of clementine or orange juice. Set aside.
- Place all the marzipan ingredients in a food processor and blitz until everything comes together as a soft sticky marzipan. (Start off with 1 tablespoon of orange juice and add a second if necessary.) You could also mix the marzipan by hand as it won’t take long. Form the marzipan into a single lump and place it in a suitable container in the fridge to firm up until you’re ready to use it.
- Once the dough is proved, transfer it back to a lightly floured board. Flatten it a bit before sprinkling on half of the dried fruit (you can discard any excess juice). Fold the dough to enclose the fruit, flatten, and do the same again with the remainder of the fruit. Then knead until combined (ie, until pieces of fruit have stopped falling out of the dough the whole time!).
- Roll the dough with a rolling pin into a long, roughly rectangular shape (perhaps 35 x 20 cm).
- Now roll the marzipan with your hands into a sausage shape roughly the same length as the dough and place it a few centimetres back from the centre. Fold the dough over, from the back, and press together to enclose the marzipan, then turn the whole thing upside down so that the join in the dough is on the underside. Flatten it a bit further with the rolling pin.
- Return the stollen to a warm place for about another hour until it has risen again. If you’re using the oven to prove the dough, simply turn the temperature up to 180°C/360°F once it’s risen and let it bake for 30 to 40 minutes, depending on how quickly your oven heats up. Otherwise, transfer it to a preheated oven for around half an hour. It will be a dark golden brown on top when it’s ready.
- Remove from the oven, brush with melted margarine and then dust generously with icing sugar. It is lovely while still warm, but can also be stored for a few days, if cooled and wrapped. (You may need to add a little more icing sugar after it’s unwrapped.)
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