Christmas muffins with marzipan and candied orange peel

Christmas muffins with marzipan and candied orange peel

Christmas is coming near. Back home that means cold weather, snow, freezing temperatures. Therefore we got hot wine with cinammon and spices. Actually the smell of cloves and cinnamon is something that generally makes me think of Christmas. During the advent we will eat the Christstollen that Wikipedia defines as this:
"A Stollen is a fruit cake containing dried fruit and often marzipan and covered with sugar, powdered sugar or icing sugar. The cake is usually made with chopped candied fruit and/or dried fruit, nuts and spices. Stollen is a traditional German cake, usually eaten during the Christmas season, when called Weihnachtsstollen or Christstollen."
Anyhow, making a Stollen is not that difficult, but after making and baking it, you got to wait something like 14 days for it to be ready to be eaten. I did not prepare to wait for so long, so I found another recipe that is making a muffin with the same tastes as the Stollen from back home but that will be ready to be eaten right after you baked it in the oven. Much better. Only problem now, there is no Marzipan and no candied orange peel (German: Orangeat) in China. Well I had to make my own then. Here you find how I made the Marzipan and I will soon write about how to make your own candied orange peel as well (including the story on how I burned half of my hand and how I learned that melted caramel can be damn hot).


Ingredients:

• 100 g raw marzipan
• 50 g almond splinter
• 50 g candied orange peel
• 50 g rum raisins
• 325 g flour
• 175 g butter (soft)
• 150 g sugar
• 1 pack of vanilla sugar (I make my own vanilla sugar by mixing my empty fresh vanilla pods with sugar and infusing everything for a few weeks)
• 4 eggs
• 1 spoon baking powder
• 3 table spoon of milk
• 1 table spoon of spice mix

Spice mix:

• 3,33 g  mace (the flour of the nutmeg)
• 1,67 g cardamon
• 0,33 mark of the vanilla pod
• 0,33 grated skin of a the lemon
• 1,33 g cinnamon
• 0,67 g allspice
• 0,33 g clove

Preparation: Cut the marzipan and the candied orange peel in small pieces and put it aside. Take the raisins out of the rum, let the rum drain off and dust them with 1 table spoon of flour. Mix the butter, marzipan, sugar, vanilla sugar and the spice mix in a bowl with a hand mixer until smooth, add the eggs and continue to mix until the sugar completely dissolved. Now add the flour and the milk. In the end add the raisin, almonds and the candied orange peel.
No butter the muffin form, fill 3/4 of each mold and bake them in the preheated oven at 175°C for about 30 minutes.Let the muffins cool down and take them out of the molds. Dust them off with some powdered sugar. The are best enjoyed on a rainy cold day with a hot cup of coffee or tea in the afternoon.