Cooking at home: Christmas stollen

Well, it is probably too late for this recipe to be any useful for this Christmas season, but I found this quite easy to make and could probably turn this into a normal bread or fruit cake by cutting down on sugar content. Not a lot of kneading required and so didn't leave my kitchen counter-top with gluey, messy leftover dough to clean up.

I was inspired by my friend Wilson in his recent article in the WOM Guide featuring our chef friend Gregoire (of the Four Seasons Hong Kong) for a cooking demonstration of this traditional German Christmas bread - it's similar to the Italian Panettone or English Christmas pudding as they all involve raisins and some kind of winter spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves etc), but I love the firmer texture and less sweet taste of a Stollen, far better than the other Christmas pastries.

Anyway, unfortunately Wilson's article didn't include a recipe nor ingredient list, so I went around found a couple easier ones on Google which I used as reference, and basically just improvised along the way to suit my own taste and preference. It yielded a big loaf good enough to serve 6-8 people.