posting meme: favorite thing to bake or cook

[ratcreature]

musesfool prompted: what's your favorite thing to bake or cook?

That's a hard question. I don't actually do either as a hobby, really, and since I live alone most of my cooking is utilitarian, like stews that reheat without fuss, so I can cook once and eat it several days, without doing complicated meal planning for optimal ingredient utilization. I'm not bad at it, and I can cook more complicated things (vegetarian ones at least) but I usually don't bother.

It's more fun when somebody else also eats the food, but I have no practice at complicated timing for elaborate menus and that gets stressful fast, so I have no real interest in hosting dinner parties.

So I guess I'm going with Christmas bakery. I usually bake a fair amount of classic Christmas cookies that are well received by family and friends, and most years I also make stollen. My personal favorite are probably Elisenlebkuchen. I just use the recipe that came with my food processor. I posted a translated recipe some years ago, it's the first of the two in this post, though recently I've mostly made them chocolate covered rather than lemon glazed.

(If you want to prompt me there are still open days.)

Comments

[musesfool]

Thank you for answering! Those cookies look delicious! And stollen is very impressive - it seems like it's a lot of work.

[ratcreature]

Stollen isn't very hard or more work than any holiday cake you see, which all are somewhat high effort. It's easier than Panettone. For Stollen the dough has to rise, then you add the nuts and fruit and the now heavy dough has to rise over night (or at least twelve hours) in a cool place (not the fridge, usually in winter my kitchen at night is cold enough), then rise again briefly after forming loaves before baking. But you don't need any special forms. The baking is a little tricky in that you need it done throughout at a slightly lower temperature than your usual brioche type yeast bread that isn't dense but fluffy, and you want a sturdy crust for it to keep well (that you soak with copious amounts of butter after baking to make the thick layer of the sugar stick) but you don't want it burned or too dry. Sometimes I've gotten that wrong and the bottom got too dark. And you have to let rest it for at least two to four weeks tightly sealed to let the flavors soak through. So you need two days with some time at the start of December.

[musesfool]

I've never made it so maybe I mean it seems like it requires a lot of forethought and planning, though it does seem like more work than everyday types of cake.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, you definitely have to plan it ahead, similar to Christmas fruitcakes that you have to let rest. If want to eat something right away you are much better off doing what's called Easter bread here, also a yeast dough with raisins and candied fruit but the fluffy kind like brioche or raisin bread.