Christmas Stollen bakey times!

Ho ho-ello! I'll start by saying I'm a big Christmas nerd. This year we bought our first Christmas tree and I've been watching Christmas movies and specials while making ornaments and gifts. I wanted to step it up a bit and do some baking, so I tried my hand at making Stollen, a traditional German Christmas cake.

With Santa Claus the movie on in the background, I jumped right in and ended up making a huugge mess. I really should have prepared all the ingredients first but I was in a hurry..so this happened..

Then I built a warm bed for the dough, and it came out looking like this. The smell of the yeast and the whole process reminded me of Easter and Christmas with my grandparents' house, baking in the warm, bread-y smelling kitchen *fuzzeh feelins*

Then rolled it all out and inserted the marzipan logs

Let that all rise again for an hour, during which my house got progressively warm and I began to melt

Got even hotter with some long baking, and the drizzled them with icing while they were still warm

Now they're wrapped and ready to be gifts (and I'm eating some right now). If you're interested, I used a Woman's Weekly recipe for one of their Christmas books. I'm glad I didn't just buy them, because other than the lack of preservatives and cost, these felt rewarding to make and are super duper tasty!