Sweet Treats
One Christmas food tradition I enjoy is a bread from Germany called stollen. It is a sweet bread with marzipan, currants and sultanas in it, and is really delicious toasted and buttered. I absolutely love having cinnamon rolls for special occasions, and thought that a cinnamon roll would be the perfect way to have all the flavours of stollen but with a little bit of Christmas spice. These rolls are excellent for Christmas morning since they can be made the night before and baked/reheated in the morning, or even baked up to a week in advance, frozen and re-heated.
Ingredients:
Juice of ½ an orange
70g dried cranberries
70g mixed dried fruit
550g strong white bread flour, plus extra for kneading
2 x 7g sachets easy-bake dried yeast
85g golden caster sugar
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
85g butter, plus extra for the tin
1 large egg
250ml warm milk
25g pistachios, chopped
250g golden marzipan
Cinnamon sugar mixture: 2tsp sugar + 1tbsp cinnamon
Instructions
- Stir together the orange juice, cranberries and mixed fruit in a small bowl and leave to soak.
- Mix the flour, yeast, caster sugar and nutmeg in a large bowl. Rub in the butter. Beat the egg with the warm milk, then pour onto the flour mixture. Stir with a round-bladed knife, then use your hands to bring the mixture together as a soft dough.
- Tip onto a work surface and knead for a couple of minutes, adding a little flour only if you need to stop it sticking. Oil the bowl, return the dough and cover with cling film. Leave to rise for 45 minutes-1 hour in a warm place until doubled in size.
- Line and butter a large roasting tin with baking parchment. Roll the risen dough out firmly to a long strip about 70 x 18cm. Spread some butter on the dough, then add the cinnamon sugar mixture. Roll the marzipan out as thin as possible, trying to roll it out into a rectangle the same size as your dough. Place the thin sheet of marzipan on top of the dough. Don’t worry if it isn’t the same size or it breaks, just arrange it on top as flat as possible.
- Add the pistachios to the soaked fruit, then scatter the mix along the dough. Starting from one end roll the entire thing up into a log and cut into rolls then place in the buttered tray. Cover with cling film and leave to rise for 45 minutes-1 hour until really well risen or overnight in the fridge.
- Heat oven to 170C fan/gas 5. Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden. Brush with melted butter and drench with icing sugar, or mix a little water into the icing sugar, drizzle over the buns and scatter over the nuts.
