Stollen

Around this time, every year, I make my Oma's German Christmas cake. A savory bread/cake filled with raisins and candied fruit soaked in extracts. Oh how I wish you could smell it. The first sign of my most favorite holiday just around the corner.
My Oma Elisabet was one remarkable woman and its at Christmas time when I miss her the most.  What made her so remarkable is not just her survival during WWII and great strength to flee alone to Iceland with her three kids, but her very keen eye for beauty and capability to make something out of nothing.  She was always busy in the kitchen, sewing room or garage ... making things that would then delight her family, friends, neighbors and even journalist. 

 

Stollen baking would be a yearly tradition for her.  Whether it would be during the hardest of times or the best.  The hardest times would most likely have been during the war, where she would have to make due with what was available and walk with her Stollen to the bakery to have them baked there. Marked with her name, so as not to get them mixed up with the other women's Stollen.  And then her happiest years when all her kids and grand kids filled the living room for Christmas.  Her shelves filled with so many cookies, cakes and Stollen.  Always enough for her loved ones to stay and eat as long as their hearts desired.  Oma made Christmas !!! 

And so as she got older, one of the many things I feared missing when she would also be missed so dearly, was her Stollen.  I spent a whole Saturday with her, learning the right way to make Stollen. Oma's way.  There was no recipe, just her nose and magical touch.  So as I stood by her side kneading and listening, my husband wrote down "the recipe" for us to keep.

Here it is to you Oma ... it smells so sweet!!!