Traditional Christmas Stollen | Easy Recipe
This is an authentic recipe for traditional German Christmas Stollen, a slightly sweet loaf with nuts, raisins, and candied citrus peels.
In our home we have a few holiday classics and this traditional Christmas Stollen is something we bake every year.
You may have seen them show up in supermarkets or specialty stores. Stollen is similar to Italian panettone, just a bit denser.
If you have never tried them, you are in for a treat!
Best of all, with this recipe you can make traditional Christmas Stollen quickly and effortlessly.
The ingredients
Aside from flour, sugar, a pinch of salt, milk, eggs, and butter you will need a few more classic holiday ingredients.
In order to get the authentic taste, you want to add cinnamon powder and ground nutmeg to your Stollen. For the best flavor, I like to grind the latter fresh just when I am ready to bake.
Raisins are good in this recipe. However, if you want to bake a more authentic Stollen, you will want to soak your raisins in rum over night. During baking the alcohol will evaporate but still retain their rum aroma.
Chopped almonds will give this stollen bite and crunch. You could blanch, peel, and chop your own or buy them already chopped.
Candied lemon peel is an essential ingredient in this traditional Christmas Stollen recipe. While you can buy it ready-made, I prefer to make my own. They are simple to make and won’t contain questionable ingredients.
How to make the traditional Christmas Stollen:
To the bowl of a standmixer, add 3 ½ cups of flour, ½ cup of warm milk, 1 tsp dried yeast, ¼ cup of sugar, 2 tsp vanilla sugar , 1 pinch of salt, ¼ tsp of freshly ground nutmeg, 1 tsp of ground cinnamon, ¾ cup soft butter. Mix until all the ingredients are well combined.
Cover with a towel or beeswax wrap and let it sit in a warm place until the dough has visibly risen.
Now add 4 oz of candied lemon peel, 4 oz chopped almonds, and 1 cup of raisins (preferably soaked in ½ cup rum over night).
You may want to put the dough on your kitchen counter and use your hands to mix all the ingredients together.
Shaping the Stollen
Using your hands or a rolling pin, roll your Stollen into a square. You can use the rolling pin or your hands to press down the middle of your Stollen.
Optional: You can add marzipan to your Stollen. It will taste great without but we always love to add 4 oz of marzipan. If you choose to do that, roll your marzipan the same length as your Stollen and press it in the indentation.
Now fold over the Stollen about 2/3 of the way. At this point, I like to pick any raisins that are sticking out or sitting on top and press them deeply into the dough. Otherwise, they like to become black and scorched when you bake your Stollen.
Transfer the Stollen to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
Cover with a tea towel and let it sit in a warm place for 30 – 60 minutes or until visibly risen.
Baking the Traditional Christmas Stollen:
Once your Stollen has risen, bake it at 320˚F for about 50 minutes.
Brushing with butter and dusting with powdered sugar:
This is another essential step in Stollen-baking. Melt about ¼ -½ cup of butter and generously brush it all over the still warm Stollen.
After that, dust your Stollen generously with powdered sugar. I like to place the powdered sugar in a small sieve and moving it around with a teaspoon, dust the Stollen.
Eating or keeping the Stollen:
I understand if you want to eat your traditional Christmas Stollen right away. We often do. It looks and smells so good, it’s hard to resist.
However, I encourage you to tightly wrap your Stollen in foil and keep it in a cool place for about 3 weeks. The flavors will develop more making your Stollen even more delicious.
Alternatively, you can double this recipe, eat one Stollen right away and keep the other one for later. Ideally, you’ll want to bake this some weeks before the holiday season so that you can can impress both your family and friends with this authentic German Christmas Stollen.
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Organic, unsulfured raisins: https://amzn.to/3gPhV9v
Candied lemon peel: https://amzn.to/34dAGPb
Ground cinnamon: https://amzn.to/2WfKVhj
Whole nutmeg: https://amzn.to/37jBTpR
Other German holiday recipes you might enjoy:
Authentic German Cinnamon Star Cookies
Tiny German Doughnuts (Schmalzgebäck)
Traditional Christmas Stollen
Ingredients
- 3 ½ cups flour
- 1 tsp dried yeast
- ¼ cup sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla sugar or vanilla extract
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 tsp cinnamon powder
- ¼ tsp ground nutmeg
- 2 whole eggs
- ½ cup warm milk
- ¾ cup soft butter
- 4 oz candied lemon peel
- 4 oz chopped almonds
- 1 cup raisins best to soak in ½ cup rum over night
- ¼ – ½ cup butter melted, for brushing the Stollen after baking
- ¼ – ½ cup powdered sugar for dusting the Stollen after bakign
- 4 oz marzipan optional
Instructions
- Mix the flour, sugars, yeast, salt, spices, milk, eggs, butter either in a stand mixer or by hand.
- Cover the bowl loosely and let the dough sit in a warm place until visibly risen.
- Add the raisins, candied lemon peel, and chopped almonds. Mix until well combined. This can be done in the bowl or better with your hands on the kitchen counter.
- With your hands or a rolling pin, roll the dough into a big square. In the middle of the square, using your hands or the rolling pin, create an indentation the length of the dough. Roll the marzipan out the same length as the dough and place into indentation (if using).
- Fold the dough over about 2/3.
- Pick raisins from the surface and stick them deeper into the loaf (they'll blacken during baking if they're sitting on the surface).
- Transfer the Stollen onto a parchment lined baking sheet.
- Loosely cover the Stollen and let sit in a warm place for about 30 – 60 minutes or until visibly risen.
- Bake the Stollen at 320˚ F for about 50 minutes.
- Remove the Stollen from the oven and immediately brush generously with the melted butter.
- Dust the Stollen generously with the powdered sugar.
- This Stollen can be enjoyed immediately but for the best flavor, I recommend tightly wrapping it in foil and keeping it in a cool place for about 3 weeks.
Video
Nutrition
Have you made a Christmas Stollen before? Or if you do, let me know how it turned out!
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Thanks to your easy recipe and advice Anja, my first ever attempt at your stollen was a resounding success! . I did as you suggested in order to make sourdough stollen – omitting milk, yeast and part of flour but, looking at the sad dry crumbly dough I decided to cheer it up by adding the milk after all. I warmed the milk to help things along, and dough felt and looked much happier once milk was incorporated. But, then I noticed my cup of starter lurking in the background, I’d forgotten to add it. It was so funny, in any case I threw that in the dough which ended up being a wee bit slack but after kneading felt just fine so just went with it. I threw a couple of tablespoons of homemade rum vanilla extract into my luxury brandy soaked fruit mix bought from last xmas, this was wee bit dry and sad looking but waste not want not. I also used 1/4 teaspoon of cardamom in addition to your spice mix. The finished product was so buttery, not dry nor soggy despite all of the extra moisture and v moreish even for me who likes stollen but who isn’t a mad fan like my husband. Th other thing to mention that might be useful for others – proving times especially the second proving which took several hours until I was happy with how it looked. I live in v old cold stone cottage in Scotland so no doubt the temperature was wee bit low but also perhaps the sourdough influenced as to how long it took. Thank you so much. I will be making more to tuck away for xmas for ourselves and for gifting. 🙂
That sounds great! I am so glad to hear it worked out and you are enjoying your Stollen ~ Anja
Greetings from Scotland Anja, thank you for all of your lovely recipes. I really love the simplicity of your stollen recipe but I need to make everything with my sourdough chum or I just cannot eat it. Is there a way to adjust your recipe in this case. Thank you
I am glad to hear you like my Stollen recipe. Nobody in Germany uses sourdough but I had been thinking of posting a SD Stollen recipe. I would use 1 cup of SD starter and omit the yeast, milk and ½ cup of flour. Happy baking ~ Anja
Thank you so much for your advice, I will try this tomorrow as I have all of the ingredients and will let you know how it turns out. 🙂
Great!
Your timing is perfect. I usually purchase about 2 dozen Stollen’s around Christmas. I put them in gift bags and give them to friends and co-workers. I like to keep my gift giving original and special.
This year, I will bake my own with your recipe. Even more original and special.
Thank you for a great and special gift idea.
Oh, nothing better than to give homemade Stollen to lucky recipients! Happy baking ~ Anja
Thanks for this recipe Anya! I will definitely be making this. I have made and gifted both stollen and panettone in the past, but it has been quite a while since I did make stollen.
Our Christmas dinner is always German food and a big family feast.
This looks so delicious! I can’t wait to try it!
I was so impressed with this recipe. It was so addicting- couldn’t stop eating it. Will be making this Christmas morning.
Yay! It makes me so happy to hear that you enjoyed this recipe!!
I’m so glad you shared this! I used to love buying Christmas stollen for special a treat when we lived in Germany! Delicious! I look forward to trying to make it myself now.
Nice! If you liked store-bought Stollen in Germany, you will love this one so much better ~ Anja
ooh this looks incredible!
Thank you so much, Megan!
Looks awesome Anja, it’s been a very long time since I had a Christmas stollen. Looks delish!
Thank you so much, Jersey! Sounds like it’s time to make it 😜