Redefining Fruitcake

I'd like to do a holiday-recap post soon, but for now I thought fruitcake deserved its own post.  As you are probably aware, fruitcake gets a bad rap in the the States, and perhaps deservedly so.

traditional American fruitcake.  what, pray tell, is the bright green stuff?  photo: wikipedia

This year, however, we were introduced to the German version of a Christmas fruitcake: the Stollen.

A Stollen, we learned, is coated in powdered sugar or icing sugar, and contains dried raisins and other fruit that have been soaked in rum or brandy.  There is also often a sort of "tube" of marzipan running through the loaf.

I hosted a little party in mid December for some of the moms I know from school, and two of them each brought one of these dense loaves wrapped in foil, informing me it is the traditional cake eaten at Christmastime. We munched on one loaf over the next couple days...

and froze the other to eat on Christmas...

Verdict: the Germans have fruitcake figured out.  Yum.

You can read about the Stollen at its Wikipedia page here.  For now, I'll leave you to drool over this delicious cross-section...

photo credit: wikipedia