Easy Homemade Stollen Recipe

The smell hits me every time I open my grandmother's old recipe box - cardamom, citrus, and decades of memories pressed between index cards. Her stollen recipe, written in fading ink on a card dated 1962, has become our family's most requested Christmas tradition. She learned it from a neighbor who'd brought it from Germany, and now Emma is the fourth generation to help measure the candied fruits.What makes this bread special isn't just the tender crumb or the hidden marzipan center. It's how the house smells while it bakes, how it tastes even better after resting for a few days, how it brings everyone to the kitchen on Christmas morning.

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Why You'll Love This Stollen Recipe

Making stollen recipe has become my favorite December project, and here's why it keeps showing up on our table year after year. The texture comes out soft and buttery - completely different from those hard, dense loaves you find wrapped in plastic at the store. I soak the dried fruits in rum the night before, which keeps them plump and full of flavor instead of dried out and chewy. The marzipan down the center does double duty - it keeps the bread moist and adds this subtle sweetness that balances out the citrus.

The timeline works better than I expected. The dough rises for about two hours total, but I'm not stuck in the kitchen that whole time. I mix everything up, go fold laundry or help Emma with homework, come back to shape the loaves, then bake them. Emma handles all the fruit prep now - he's gotten good at chopping candied peel into even pieces and rolling out the marzipan into a neat log. One recipe makes two loaves, so we keep one and wrap the other for my sister. The smell alone is worth making it - butter, spices, and citrus filling every corner of the house.

Jump to:

• Why You'll Love This Stollen Recipe
• Ingredients for Stollen Recipe
• How To Make Stollen Recipe Step By Step
• Storing Your Stollen Recipe
• Stollen Recipe Variations
• Equipment For Stollen Recipe
• Smart Swaps for Stollen Recipe
• What to Serve With Stollen Recipe
• Top Tip
• The Dish My Mother Swore By (And Still Does!)
• FAQ
• Time to Start Your Own Stollen Recipe Tradition
• Related
• Pairing
• Stollen Recipe

Ingredients for Stollen Recipe

The Dough:

• All-purpose flour
• Active dry yeast
• Whole milk
• Granulated sugar
• Unsalted butter
• Large eggs
• Salt
• Ground cardamom
• Ground mace
• Lemon zest
• Orange zest

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The Filling:

• Marzipan
• Golden raisins
• Dried currants
• Candied citrus peel
• Candied cherries
• Slivered almonds
• Dark rum

The Finish:

• Melted butter for brushing
• Powdered sugar for coating
• Vanilla extract

See recipe card for quantities.

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How To Make Stollen Recipe Step By Step

Night Before (5 minutes):

• Chop candied fruits and cherries into smaller pieces
• Mix with raisins and currants in a bowl
• Pour rum or orange juice over everything until covered
• Leave it on the counter overnight
• Drain well before using

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Making the Dough (20 minutes):

• Warm milk until it feels lukewarm on your wrist
• Add yeast and a spoonful of sugar
• Wait 10 minutes - it should get bubbly and smell yeasty
• Toss in butter, eggs, rest of the sugar, spices, and zests
• Start adding flour until the dough comes together
• Knead for 8-10 minutes until smooth (mixer or by hand)

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First Rise (90 minutes):

• Grease a big bowl and drop the dough in
• Cover with a damp towel
• Go do something else for an hour and a half
• Dough should double in size

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Mixing in Fruit (10 minutes):

• Punch the dough down
• Add your drained fruits and almonds
• Knead everything together until fruit is spread throughout
• Rest 10 minutes while you shape the marzipan into a log

Shaping (15 minutes):

• Roll marzipan into a rope about as long as your forearm
• Press dough into an oval
• Lay marzipan down the middle
• Fold one side over like closing a book
• Pinch edges shut
• Put on parchment paper on baking sheet

Second Rise (45 minutes):

• Cover loaves with towel
• Let puff up again
• Turn oven to 350°F

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Baking (35-40 minutes):

• Shake powdered sugar over the top while hot
• Wait until completely cool before touching
• Bake until brown and smells done
• Poke with thermometer - should read 190°F
• Pull out and immediately brush all over with melted butter

Storing Your Stollen Recipe

Short Term (2 weeks):

• Cool completely first
• Wrap in parchment paper
• Wrap again in foil
• Leave on the counter
• Brush with melted butter every few days

Long Term (2 months):

• Cool completely
• Wrap twice in plastic
• Put in freezer bag
• Write the date on it
• Thaw on counter when ready

Serving:

• Add fresh powdered sugar before serving
• Use a serrated knife for slicing
• Room temperature tastes best
• Toast slices if you want

Stollen Recipe Variations

Chocolate Version:

• Replace half the fruit with chocolate chips
• Mix cocoa powder into the dough
• Skip powdered sugar, drizzle melted chocolate instead
• Emma asks for this one every year now

Extra Nuts:

• Double the almonds
• Throw in chopped walnuts or pecans
• Toast them first
• Leave out the marzipan or use almond paste

Tropical:

• Swap dried mango and pineapple for the raisins
• Add coconut flakes to the dough
• Use coconut rum for soaking
• Top with toasted coconut

Apple Spice:

• Dried apples instead of raisins
• Extra cinnamon and a bit of cloves
• Soak in apple brandy
• Good with morning coffee

Equipment For Stollen Recipe

• Stand mixer with dough hook
• Large mixing bowls
• Clean kitchen towels for covering dough
• Baking sheets
• Parchment paper
• Instant-read thermometer

Smart Swaps for Stollen Recipe

Fruits:

• Raisins → Dried cranberries or chopped dates
• Candied peel → Dried apricots chopped up
• Candied cherries → More raisins or just skip them
• Currants → Whatever dried fruit you've got

Liquids:

• Dark rum → Brandy works fine
• Rum → Orange juice (not as flavorful but okay)
• Milk → Almond milk or oat milk

Fats:

• Butter → Coconut oil or plant butter
• Whole milk → 2% or skim

Other:

• Mace → Nutmeg does the same thing
• Marzipan → Leave it out (drier but still tastes good)
• Cardamom → Use more cinnamon instead

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What to Serve With Stollen Recipe

stollen recipe is rich and sweet enough that you don't need much with it. In the morning, I usually just have it with black coffee or tea. The spices in the bread go really well with something bitter to balance them out. Emma likes his with a glass of cold milk. If you're serving it for dessert or at a party, mulled wine or hot apple cider works great - keeps that Christmas vibe going. Some people do champagne on Christmas morning, which feels fancy but honestly pairs nice with the almond flavor from the marzipan.

As far as toppings go, most people eat it plain because it's already buttery and sweet from the coating. But if you want something on it, regular salted butter is my pick - especially on toasted slices. Cream cheese works if you like that tangy contrast. Fresh fruit on the side is good too - sliced pears or apples give you something crisp and light to cut through all that richness. We usually put out a bowl of clementines when we're eating stollen recipe, and people end up grabbing those between slices.

The Dish My Mother Swore By (And Still Does!)

My mom's been making stollen recipe every Christmas since the 70s. Got the recipe from a German neighbor and stuck with it, except she does one thing different - adds a whole vanilla bean right into the dough. Not extract brushed on after like some people do, but the actual scraped seeds mixed in with the cardamom and mace. She says it makes everything taste warmer without you being able to point at it and say "that's vanilla." You can't pick it out when you're eating, but something about the bread just tastes more complete.

The other thing she does is stick the shaped loaves in the fridge overnight before the second rise. Cold dough is easier to work with and supposedly develops better flavor, same as pizza dough sitting for a day. I thought she was making it up, but when I tried it her way, the dough wasn't nearly as sticky and the finished bread did taste different - hard to explain how, just deeper somehow. Adds a whole extra day to the process, but you're already waiting a week to eat it so who cares about one more day.

FAQ

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Time to Start Your Own Stollen Recipe Tradition

You've got everything now - the basic recipe, the timing, the storage tricks, and a few family secrets that took me years to figure out. Stollen isn't a last-minute project, but it's not complicated either. Just needs some planning and patience. Make it once and you'll understand why people have been baking this bread for hundreds of years. It's one of those things that makes December feel different.

Want more recipes that fill your kitchen with good smells? Try our Easy Homemade Frittata Recipe for weekend breakfasts that come together fast. Our Healthy Cheesy Breadsticks Recipe is what Emma asks for every Friday night. And if you're baking bread anyway, The Best Outback Bread Recipe gives you that dark, slightly sweet loaf everyone loves without any weird ingredients.

Share your stollen! We love seeing how yours turns out.

Rate this Stollen Recipe and let us know if you tried any of the variations!

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