Christmas timeTruth to tell, we don't really do mistletoe here at chez D'oH Boy. Or listen to Cliff Richard come to think of it. But we do like a sticky yeast based vegan bread product...mistletoecardamon and marzipan bread and wine....
I genuinely planned to make a traditional stollen with cherries and chunks of marzipan and icing sugar and everything, but while looking for a recipe, I found this thread on the Post Punk Kitchen. There was a recipe for stollen. But it contains the mysterious (and hard to get in the UK) vital wheat gluten. I was going to improvise, then I looked a little lower and saw the recipe for cardamon and marzipan bread. Sold!
There were only 2 problems:
- Pearl sugar. A shout out on Twitter and I found this is known in the UK as nibbled sugar. That didn't help a lot because the only place I could find that was on bakery bits and I didn't have time to wait for delivery. No worries I found some large sugar crystals intended for coffee. I figured the worst case would be they melted. Actually they didn't and they were fine.
- Ground cardamon. I'm sure I've seen this for sale....but not anywhere I looked. No problem, I'll just buy whole cardamon, seed is and smash the seeds with the end of a rolling pin (since I don't have a pestle and mortar). Next time I think up something like that please stop me! Have you any idea how long that takes? I have. It's a l-o-n-g time....
I have to admit I was a little nervous when I came to shaping it. I've never done anything like this before (yes, the top picture makes that pretty clear) but it actually wasn't too bad.
I made some big cuts in the top of the wreath with scissors and slammed it into the oven.
Due to lack of space and because I wasn't sure it would all work out, I put the second half of the dough into a long loaf tin. I also made a couple of small rolls of spare dough - so I could taste is straight away!
10 mins for the rolls and 20 or so for the larger pieces and the house was full of the smell of cardamon and marzipan. I tasted one of the rolls (OK, 2....) and had a big smile on my face.
Fiddly. Especially if you "grind" your own cardamon. But WELL worth it.