Homemade Dutch Easter Stollen: A Delicious Orange, Cinnamon & Raisin Recipe for Your Brunch
As the days grow longer and the scent of spring fills the air, there’s a special tradition that many look forward to during Easter: baking and enjoying a delightful Easter Stollen. This creamy, rich bread, generously infused with the bright, zesty notes of orange, the comforting warmth of cinnamon, and plump, juicy raisins, is more than just a simple bun; it’s a centerpiece for any festive Easter brunch or breakfast. Its subtly sweet flavor and comforting texture make it an irresistible treat that brings joy and tradition to the holiday table.
Do you know what I truly love to indulge in during an Easter brunch? It’s the traditional Dutch Easter bun, often featuring a marzipan (almond paste) core. The customary way to enjoy it is to meticulously remove the almond paste and then spread it generously onto each slice. However, in my household, there’s a small, sweet predicament. I am, quite literally, the only one who truly appreciates almond paste. And, to be completely honest, devouring an entire traditional Dutch Easter bun (especially if I manage to find one that’s safe for my peanut allergy) all by myself is a bit much to ask.
So, this year, I decided to craft my own version – a personalized take on the classic that skips the almond paste but keeps all the comforting, aromatic flavors that make Easter stollen so beloved. This recipe delivers a simple yet profoundly satisfying homemade Easter Stollen, ensuring that everyone at the table can enjoy a slice of this festive treat. It perfectly captures the essence of the traditional bun with its rich, yeasted dough, aromatic spices, and a generous scattering of rehydrated dried fruits, making it a perfect, crowd-pleasing addition to your holiday spread.
Essential Baking Tips for a Flawless Homemade Easter Stollen
Creating homemade bread, especially for a special occasion like Easter, can feel daunting, but with a few key techniques and a little understanding of the science behind baking, you’ll achieve perfect, bakery-quality results every time. These tips are designed to ensure your dough rises beautifully, your fruits remain wonderfully moist, and your flavors are perfectly balanced, guaranteeing a truly exceptional Easter Stollen.
- Activating Your Yeast: The Critical First Step for a Perfect Rise. When combining active dry yeast with lukewarm milk and sugar, it’s crucial to give the yeast about five minutes to activate before proceeding. This step, often called “proofing” the yeast, is not just about starting the fermentation process; it’s also a simple, visual test to ensure your yeast is still viable and active. If, after five minutes, you observe tiny bubbles or a frothy layer forming on the surface of your mixture, your yeast is healthy and ready to work its magic, giving your stollen that desired airy texture. No bubbles? It’s a clear sign your yeast is no longer active, and you should use a fresh batch to avoid a dense, flat loaf. This preliminary step saves time, ingredients, and potential disappointment in the long run.
- Sugar’s Role: Fueling the Yeast for Airiness and Flavor. The sugar added to your yeast mixture isn’t just for sweetness; it serves as vital “food” for the yeast microbes. These microscopic organisms consume the sugar, converting it into carbon dioxide gas and alcohol during fermentation. The carbon dioxide gas is what creates the airy pockets, making your bread light and fluffy. Significantly reducing or completely discarding the sugar at this stage would starve the yeast, preventing it from producing enough gas, which would result in a dense, heavy stollen lacking its characteristic lightness. So, remember, the sugar is essential for both the texture and a hint of sweetness in your finished bread!
- Moist Raisins and Currants: The Secret to a Tender Crumb. For a truly superior stollen, pre-soaking your raisins and currants is an absolute game-changer. By steeping them in hot water for approximately 10 minutes, they rehydrate and plump up, becoming incredibly moist and flavorful. Dry, hard dried fruits can actually draw moisture from your dough during baking, leading to a drier final product. After soaking, it’s vital to thoroughly dry them between sheets of kitchen paper or a clean kitchen towel before incorporating them into the dough. Any excess moisture will alter the dough’s consistency and can negatively impact the bake. This small step ensures your stollen has tender, juicy pockets of fruit throughout.
- Spice It Up: Embracing Creative Flavor Variations. While ground cinnamon provides a classic, comforting warmth that is synonymous with many baked goods, don’t hesitate to experiment with other spices to tailor your stollen to your personal taste or for different occasions. For example, substituting cinnamon with a fragrant gingerbread spice mix offers a fantastic, rich, and festive variation, especially if you’re making this stollen for Christmas or simply enjoy a broader, more complex spice profile. A blend that includes ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and allspice can transform the flavor beautifully, adding a delightful depth.
- Citrus Zest: A Bright and Refreshing Alternative. The orange rind in this recipe contributes a lovely, bright, and slightly bitter zest that perfectly complements the sweetness of the raisins and the warmth of the cinnamon. However, if you prefer a different citrus note, or simply don’t have an orange on hand, lemon rind makes an excellent and equally delicious substitute. Lemon zest offers a brighter, tangier freshness that can beautifully cut through the richness of the bread, adding another delightful dimension and a vibrant aroma to your homemade stollen.
Keeping Your Homemade Easter Stollen Fresh and Delicious for Longer
While freshly baked stollen is undeniably at its absolute best right out of the oven, permeating your home with its inviting aroma, proper storage techniques can significantly extend its life and preserve its delightful texture and flavor. Here’s how to keep your bread in prime condition for as long as possible, ensuring every slice is a treat:
- Enjoy Them Fresh: The Ultimate Same-Day Experience. Typically, bread buns, including these delicious stollen, are most tender and flavorful on the same day they are baked. This is when their crumb is at its softest, and their aromatic spices are most vibrant. After the first day, they can naturally begin to dry out and become stale, losing some of their initial charm and delicate texture.
- Short-Term Storage: Up to 3 Days at Room Temperature. If you plan to enjoy your stollen over a few days, a dedicated bread container, a bread box, or an airtight plastic bag is your best friend. Storing them at room temperature in such a container will create a stable environment that helps maintain their freshness for up to 3 days, keeping them wonderfully soft and preventing them from going stale too quickly. Ensure they are completely cooled before storing to prevent condensation.
- Avoid the Refrigerator: A Common Pitfall. It might seem intuitive to store bread in the refrigerator to prolong its life, but this is generally not recommended for most types of bread, including stollen. The cool, moist environment of a refrigerator actually accelerates the staling process through a scientific phenomenon called “starch retrogradation.” This causes the starch molecules to recrystallize, resulting in a bread with a noticeably different, often undesirable, structure and taste – becoming tough and dry much faster than if left at room temperature.
- Freezing for Longer Freshness: A Great Option for Up to Two Weeks. For longer-term storage, freezing is an excellent option that preserves the quality of your stollen. Your homemade stollen can be frozen quite successfully for up to two weeks. To freeze, wrap individual mini stollen tightly in plastic wrap, then place them in a freezer-safe bag or airtight container to prevent freezer burn. To enjoy, simply remove the stollen from the freezer about 3 hours before you plan to eat it, allowing it to thaw gradually at room temperature. For that irresistible “freshly baked” experience, you can pop the thawed stollen into a preheated oven. Bake it for about 3 minutes at 355 degrees Fahrenheit (180 degrees Celsius) (or directly from frozen if you prefer a quicker warm-up, though thawing first is ideal). This brief warming will revive its soft interior and lightly crisp crust, making it taste almost as good as new!
Discover More Delightful Baked Goods from Our Kitchen
If you’ve enjoyed the rewarding experience of baking this fragrant Easter Stollen, you might be eager to explore other wonderful recipes from my collection. Our kitchen is always bustling with new ideas, from savory breads that complement any meal to sweet pastries perfect for any time of day. Dive into these other popular recipes and continue your baking adventure!
- Orange and Walnut Bread Buns
- Dutch Suikerbroodjes (Sugar Buns)
- Chocolate Hazelnuts Puff Pastries
- Homemade French Croissants
Did you try your hand at making this absolutely delicious homemade Easter Stollen recipe? We’d love to see your culinary creations and share in your baking joy! Tag #byandreajanssen via Instagram to share your masterpiece with our growing community. I genuinely enjoy seeing what you bake and regularly share the most beautiful photos from our talented home cooks. Did you fall in love with this recipe and find it a perfect addition to your Easter celebration? Then please take a moment to leave a rating on the recipe card below! Your valuable feedback not only helps me refine my recipes and create more content you’ll love, but it also guides other home cooks in their baking adventures.
Hungry for more inspiration and exciting recipes to conquer your kitchen?
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📖 Recipe
VIDEO
RECIPE CARD
Andréa
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Ingredients
- ½ cup raisins
- ½ cup currants
- â…” cup milk
- 1â…” tablespoons sugar
- 1 teaspoon yeast, instant
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- 1 egg yolk, size M
- 1 teaspoon orange zest
- 1 oz. candied orange peel, cut into small pieces
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 tablespoon butter, to grease the baking tray
- 1 egg, size s
- 1 tablespoon confectioners sugar
All my recipes are written both in Metric (gram / ml) and US Customary (cups / pounds). Here you can select which type of amount you would like to see.
Instructions
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Put the raisins and currants in a bowl. Pour hot water over them until covered. Let them soak for 10 minutes, then pat them dry with a kitchen towel.½ cup raisins, ½ cup currants
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Warm the milk until lukewarm. Stir in the sugar and yeast. Let it sit for 5 minutes until bubbles appear.â…” cup milk, 1â…” tablespoons sugar, 1 teaspoon yeast, instant
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In a large bowl, mix the flour and salt. Add the milk mixture and knead for 10 minutes until smooth.2 cups all-purpose flour, ¾ teaspoon salt
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Cover and let it rise for 60 minutes in a warm place.
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Press the dough flat and add the raisins, currants, egg yolk, orange zest, candied orange peel, and cinnamon. Knead until everything is evenly mixed.1 egg yolk, 1 teaspoon orange zest, 1 oz. candied orange peel, ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
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Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces.
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Shape them into small balls and let them rest for 20 minutes under a towel.
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Form them into oval mini loaves.
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Grease a baking tray with butter and place the loaves on it. Let them rise for 60 minutes in a warm place.1 tablespoon butter
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Preheat the oven to 390 °F or 350 °F.
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Beat the egg and brush it over the loaves.1 egg
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Bake for 15 minutes until golden brown.
Serving
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Dust with confectioners sugar before serving.1 tablespoon confectioners sugar
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Enjoy warm with butter, or eat them cold-they’re delicious either way!
Notes
2. How do I keep the raisins from drying out? The key to plump, juicy raisins and currants in your stollen is proper preparation. To prevent them from becoming dry and hard during the baking process, a crucial step is to soak them in hot water for about 10 minutes before adding them to your dough. This rehydrates them thoroughly. After soaking, gently pat them thoroughly dry with a clean kitchen towel to remove any excess surface moisture, which could otherwise affect your dough’s consistency and rise. This simple technique ensures they remain soft and delicious, adding wonderful bursts of flavor throughout your bread.
3. Storage Tips for Maximum Freshness and Enjoyment
This homemade stollen is truly at its best when enjoyed freshly baked, but you can certainly store it to savor over a few days or even weeks. Here are the best ways to keep your stollen fresh and delicious:
- At Room Temperature: To maintain its softness and prevent it from drying out, store your stollen in an airtight container or a sealed plastic bag at room temperature for up to 3 days. Ensure the stollen has completely cooled before storing to prevent any condensation from forming, which could lead to sogginess.
- Freezing for Longer Periods: For extended freshness, stollen freezes remarkably well for up to 2 weeks. To freeze, wrap individual mini stollen tightly in plastic wrap, then place them in a freezer-safe bag or airtight container. This helps prevent freezer burn and keeps them tasting fresh. When you’re ready to enjoy, simply remove the stollen from the freezer and allow it to thaw gradually at room temperature for about 3 hours.
- Reheating for Warm Enjoyment: To bring back that irresistible ‘just-baked’ warmth and aroma, especially after thawing from the freezer or after a day or two of room temperature storage, you can quickly reheat your stollen. Preheat your oven to 355 °F (180 °C) and bake the stollen for just 3 minutes. This quick reheat will warm through the bread beautifully, refreshing its texture and releasing those wonderful spice aromas.
Nutrition
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