Bread and ginger: white chocolate stollen and lebkuchen recipes | Baking (2024)

Lebkuchen

These are a gentler alternative to the tooth-cracking gingerbread shapes – brittle biscuit, rock hard royal icing – so plentiful at this time of year. Lebkuchen are rich, soft and sweet, spiced and mistily glazed. Because these spread and rise as they bake, you won’t be able to roll and cut the dough into fancy shapes, but who needs biscuits shaped like holly leaves, anyway? Ginger has a kick to it, but when combined with cinnamon and cloves, it yields a more complex flavour – fragrant, earthy and spicy. It’s a trio that tastes of the essence of Christmas.

To glaze
15-20ml water
100g icing sugar

1 Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4 and line a couple of baking trays with baking parchment.

2 Rub the butter into the flour using your fingertips until no visible pieces of butter remain. The mixture should look like fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the ground almonds and sugar, followed by the baking powder, spices and salt.

3 In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks together with the golden syrup, then pour this into the flour mixture. Mash the wet and dry ingredients together with a fork until you’re left with a smooth, slightly sticky dough.

4 Bake for 15 minutes, until risen, lightly browned and set. Swap oven shelves halfway through if not using a fan oven. The biscuits will be very soft when freshly baked, but will firm as they cool.

5 Glaze the biscuits while hot. Slowly whisk the water into the icing sugar until the mixture is smooth. Brush the glaze liberally over the biscuits and leave to cool completely on their trays.

It’s easy enough to find a good, boozy Christmas pudding or a feathery pannetone in the shops, but I’m often left disappointed by stollen, at times too heavy or too light; bland or hyper-sweet. But when made at home, with a little patience and a watchful eye, stollen can be spectacular – rich with butter and egg, studded with chunks of ginger and sweet with zested marzipan.

For the dough
75g unsalted butter
275g strong white flour
7g instant dried yeast
25g caster sugar
½ tsp salt
110ml whole milk, lukewarm
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
Zest of 2 lemons
150g stem ginger, roughly chopped
100g white chocolate, roughly chopped
Zest of 1 orange
200g marzipan

To finish
75g butter
50g icing sugar

1 Melt the butter over a low heat then set aside to cool slightly while you prepare the other ingredients. Combine the flour, yeast, sugar and salt in a large bowl. Pour in the milk and melted butter, then add the egg, vanilla extract half the lemon zest.

3 After 10 minutes of kneading, add the stem ginger and white chocolate, and distribute the chunks through the dough using your hands. Return the dough to its bowl, cover with clingfilm and leave to rise at room temperature until 1½–2 times its original size. This could take as little as one hour if your kitchen is warm and the yeast lively, but be prepared to wait up to two hours on cooler days.

4 Tip the risen dough from its bowl on to a well-floured surface and pat/stretch it out to a rectangle roughly 20 x 30cm. Mash the remaining lemon zest and orange zest into the marzipan, then use your hands to mould it into a rough 30cm-long log shape. Lay the marzipan across one of the long edges of the dough then roll the dough up around the marzipan to form a fat roll. Pat the roll down to a squat, flattened shape and pinch the ends to secure the marzipan inside.

5 Bake the stollen for 40 minutes, until well-risen and golden brown.

6 Melt the remaining butter and brush liberally all over the still-hot stollen – both on top and underneath. (This is crucial for that characteristic tenderness, so don’t forgo the extravagance). Repeat until all the butter has been absorbed into the stollen’s crust. Dust generously with the icing sugar, then leave to cool completely. Serve in fat slices.