You should get those not from a company in a plastic pack, but from a good bakery...and then maybe also in plastic packed, but it's more like "homemade" Zimtsterne should be soft and moist, not hard and dry.
@@MYTravelBF You can still make them soft and moist by adding a half dried apple slice to the box, preferably on a piece of baking sheet or something else to prevent it from directly touching them. Half dried means they were in the oven until the cut side turns a little bit brown, which seals the cut and makes it sterile. Leave it with the cookies for a few days and they soften up...and if the apple was very aromatic they will also get a small hint of apple taste/smell to them...
The Stollen you got was a quite cheap brand, produced in a large factory. So the quality was probably not very high (also it was very small, traditional Stollen are are between 2 and 4 times as large). I don't blame you, I just want to point out that Stollen made in an actual artisan bakery or even at home are usually much better. My family always buys them in our lokal bakery or gets them from Dresden, where they originated. But I live in Saxony, so I don't know if there are good hand-made Stollen available in other regions. They are very important to us and the ones from Dresden actually have protected origin labels.
Thanks for sharing! We didn't know they originated in Dresden. We want to try more, homemade ones, which will definitely be better. Thank you for watching!
Marzipan potatoes are named after their look, they almost look like little Kartoffeln due to the cinnamon on the surface. And they are my favorite ones. But as some have mentioned, for the first try you never should buy no name products but well known brands esp. the Nürnberger Lebkuchen (Wicklein, Schmidt, Haeberlein-Metzger) or anything wiht marzipan (Lübecker Marzipan!). They are worth the price! Ein schönes und ruhiges Weihnachtsfest! 😘
Schmalzkuchen (very common on christmas markets) is one thing that should be mentioned as a typical Christmas treat. And if you have the opportunity to get some selfmade "Nussecken", you may try those too.
As the other comments report, Industry cookies and cakes are never as good as homemade...like comparing pumpkin pie from Walmart to home made pie. Most families have fun baking cookies with the children...but of course some specialties from other cities, like Stollen from Dresden, Pinten from Aachen, Lebkuchen from Nürnberg or Baumkuchen von Salzwedel are bought....but not buying the cheapest sort from EDEKA ("gut und günstig"). We have not Seen you at the Christmas Market on the Lister Meile...today it is too wet!
Thank you for letting us know the specialities from different places in Germany! We’d love to do a homemade taste testing one day because surely they’re all better than the store bought ones. We’ve been at the Christmas Market on Lister Meile, so maybe we just missed you or we were so bundled up with the cold this last week you couldn’t recognize us🥶
@@MYTravelBF Of course the taste of sweets is very individual. I moved to Germany to lecture for a year at the University and have stayed 51 years, giving me enough time to get used to German cooking and sweets. I was in the USA several times over the years for Christmas...part of my family was still living there...the rest have moved to Germany...and I remember the cakes and cookies as being too sweet for me. I think the best part of Christmas is the memories and when I sit with friends and family around a table and "celebrate" Advent and Christmas with Christmas goodies, I am provided with memories for the next 50 years. My memories of Christmas as a child in Florida was pretty full with hectic and consume, which was probably due to my being a child. I believed in Santa until I was 9! I do not remember enjoying long meals or sitting around and chatting with friends and family. After Church my family usually sat around the TV watching a Christmas movie, which was okay, but not very cosy. Now I sit with my German Godchildren and their children, watching the candles, listening to carols and eating cookies...very cozy and schön.
Haha, there is no ginger at all in none of them! The "paper" is a wafer, as in communion wafers in church, just a runny dough of only wheat flour and water, baked on low temp in order not to let them get brown.
Do Christstollen honor and don't taste the cheapo store brand from Edeka. Get a real Dresdner Christstollen. Only if you don't like THAT, you know that you don't like Christstollen. ;-) Same for the Lebkuchen. Anything that has Edeka on the label is their own store brand. They are not necessarily bad, often they come from the same manufacturer as branded products, but often, they really don't taste quite as good as the original. Good ingredients don't come for cheap. The more complex a product, the more they have to compromise for cheap prices. On the other hand, simple products like milk are just that, simple. Whether it says JA! on the label or Weyenstephan, they usually come from the same local dairy coop, and the quality is the same. Not so with things like Stollen, where ingredients and workmanship make the difference. Other supermarket-chain-specific no-name brands are Gut&Günstig, JA!, or many things that you can buy at Aldi, Netto, Penny, or Lidl. There are whole websites dedicated to comparisons between brand products and store-brands. For some big brands, manufacturing the store-brands has even become economically more important than their own brands. In Germany, they have taken over large parts of the market. Again, they are nor necessarily bad, but they are usually not setting the standards. ;-) So, don't start your taste-experiments with the cheap store-brands, start top-down and settle with the best price/taste relation. ;-) Take care and have fun!
Thank you for all the info! We’ll have to try the real stuff, like Christstollen from Dresden, now! We always love learning all this new stuff from people are it’s our first Christmas living in Germany!
Every of us Germans probably has different likes and not likes of the store products for Xmas. I e.g. like a fruit taste and marzipan. And chocolate. But apart from Spekulatius - that I love dunked into coffee but not without - I like Xmas products that aren't to dry. My favourite Lebkuchen are e.g. Cocosella Lebkuchen that have a little coconuttaste and are very soft. Stollen I prefer with a Marzipan filling - and they taste different from producer to producer. I like German fruitbread with lots of nuts and dry fruits - it is not cake sweet and very often a less processed flour is used. You should dry different products of one article to really decide what you like and what not. If you like Marzipan dry the "Baumstämme" that are offered from different brands. It is Marzipan in form of a log covered by chocolate.
You should get those not from a company in a plastic pack, but from a good bakery...and then maybe also in plastic packed, but it's more like "homemade"
Zimtsterne should be soft and moist, not hard and dry.
That's great to know! If they were soft and moist, they might have been one of our favorites!
@@MYTravelBF You can still make them soft and moist by adding a half dried apple slice to the box, preferably on a piece of baking sheet or something else to prevent it from directly touching them.
Half dried means they were in the oven until the cut side turns a little bit brown, which seals the cut and makes it sterile.
Leave it with the cookies for a few days and they soften up...and if the apple was very aromatic they will also get a small hint of apple taste/smell to them...
The Stollen you got was a quite cheap brand, produced in a large factory. So the quality was probably not very high (also it was very small, traditional Stollen are are between 2 and 4 times as large). I don't blame you, I just want to point out that Stollen made in an actual artisan bakery or even at home are usually much better. My family always buys them in our lokal bakery or gets them from Dresden, where they originated. But I live in Saxony, so I don't know if there are good hand-made Stollen available in other regions. They are very important to us and the ones from Dresden actually have protected origin labels.
Thanks for sharing! We didn't know they originated in Dresden. We want to try more, homemade ones, which will definitely be better. Thank you for watching!
The "rice paper" is called Oblaten and can be found in the bakery goods section of a supermarket.
It's something like a soft wafer...
Thank you! If we're trying to cook our own, now we'll know where to find them!
Marzipan potatoes are named after their look, they almost look like little Kartoffeln due to the cinnamon on the surface. And they are my favorite ones. But as some have mentioned, for the first try you never should buy no name products but well known brands esp. the Nürnberger Lebkuchen (Wicklein, Schmidt, Haeberlein-Metzger) or anything wiht marzipan (Lübecker Marzipan!). They are worth the price! Ein schönes und ruhiges Weihnachtsfest! 😘
We'll have to try to the Nürnberger Lebkuchen and Nürnberger Lebkuchen! Thank you for sharing those, so we can try them in the future!
Schmalzkuchen (very common on christmas markets) is one thing that should be mentioned as a typical Christmas treat.
And if you have the opportunity to get some selfmade "Nussecken", you may try those too.
Ah yes! We’ve had the Schmalzkuchen! It’s delicious, especially when it’s cold out. We’ll have to try to the Nussecken though! Thanks for sharing!
Go to a local bakery and buy christmas cookies
okay a little bit pricy, but 🤷♂
Thank you! We will next time! Surely the sweets will be better.
As the other comments report, Industry cookies and cakes are never as good as homemade...like comparing pumpkin pie from Walmart to home made pie. Most families have fun baking cookies with the children...but of course some specialties from other cities, like Stollen from Dresden, Pinten from Aachen, Lebkuchen from Nürnberg or Baumkuchen von Salzwedel are bought....but not buying the cheapest sort from EDEKA ("gut und günstig"). We have not Seen you at the Christmas Market on the Lister Meile...today it is too wet!
Thank you for letting us know the specialities from different places in Germany! We’d love to do a homemade taste testing one day because surely they’re all better than the store bought ones. We’ve been at the Christmas Market on Lister Meile, so maybe we just missed you or we were so bundled up with the cold this last week you couldn’t recognize us🥶
@@MYTravelBF Of course the taste of sweets is very individual. I moved to Germany to lecture for a year at the University and have stayed 51 years, giving me enough time to get used to German cooking and sweets. I was in the USA several times over the years for Christmas...part of my family was still living there...the rest have moved to Germany...and I remember the cakes and cookies as being too sweet for me. I think the best part of Christmas is the memories and when I sit with friends and family around a table and "celebrate" Advent and Christmas with Christmas goodies, I am provided with memories for the next 50 years. My memories of Christmas as a child in Florida was pretty full with hectic and consume, which was probably due to my being a child. I believed in Santa until I was 9! I do not remember enjoying long meals or sitting around and chatting with friends and family. After Church my family usually sat around the TV watching a Christmas movie, which was okay, but not very cosy. Now I sit with my German Godchildren and their children, watching the candles, listening to carols and eating cookies...very cozy and schön.
You must bake your own Weihnachtsgebäck, dont buy packaged stuff from the store. And dont say anything negative against Stollen or you get evicted.
We’ll have to find a good recipe and make our own. As for the Stollen, we tried another one after making the video, and it was a lot better!
Dresdener Stollen from Aldi is actually always highly rated. I think you can buy it at other places as well, it’s some brand.
Also Stollen counts as Bread, not cake. Some eat it with butter or honey on top.
Haha, there is no ginger at all in none of them! The "paper" is a wafer, as in communion wafers in church, just a runny dough of only wheat flour and water, baked on low temp in order not to let them get brown.
Thanks for sharing! We weren’t sure what it was!
Do Christstollen honor and don't taste the cheapo store brand from Edeka. Get a real Dresdner Christstollen. Only if you don't like THAT, you know that you don't like Christstollen. ;-)
Same for the Lebkuchen. Anything that has Edeka on the label is their own store brand. They are not necessarily bad, often they come from the same manufacturer as branded products, but often, they really don't taste quite as good as the original. Good ingredients don't come for cheap. The more complex a product, the more they have to compromise for cheap prices. On the other hand, simple products like milk are just that, simple. Whether it says JA! on the label or Weyenstephan, they usually come from the same local dairy coop, and the quality is the same. Not so with things like Stollen, where ingredients and workmanship make the difference.
Other supermarket-chain-specific no-name brands are Gut&Günstig, JA!, or many things that you can buy at Aldi, Netto, Penny, or Lidl. There are whole websites dedicated to comparisons between brand products and store-brands. For some big brands, manufacturing the store-brands has even become economically more important than their own brands. In Germany, they have taken over large parts of the market. Again, they are nor necessarily bad, but they are usually not setting the standards. ;-) So, don't start your taste-experiments with the cheap store-brands, start top-down and settle with the best price/taste relation. ;-)
Take care and have fun!
Thank you for all the info! We’ll have to try the real stuff, like Christstollen from Dresden, now! We always love learning all this new stuff from people are it’s our first Christmas living in Germany!
Every of us Germans probably has different likes and not likes of the store products for Xmas. I e.g. like a fruit taste and marzipan. And chocolate. But apart from Spekulatius - that I love dunked into coffee but not without - I like Xmas products that aren't to dry. My favourite Lebkuchen are e.g. Cocosella Lebkuchen that have a little coconuttaste and are very soft. Stollen I prefer with a Marzipan filling - and they taste different from producer to producer. I like German fruitbread with lots of nuts and dry fruits - it is not cake sweet and very often a less processed flour is used.
You should dry different products of one article to really decide what you like and what not. If you like Marzipan dry the "Baumstämme" that are offered from different brands. It is Marzipan in form of a log covered by chocolate.
Thank you for all the info! It looks like we definitely have a lot more to try! The Cocosella Lebkuchen sounds delicious!
What is some of your favorite baked german Christmas sweets/desserts?( no raisins ) I usually try to make a different European dessert each year
SPECUATIUS COOKIES using traditional PROTESTANT CHRISTIAN topics,, in your casw int was !" THE HAEVENLY JERULASEM "
The speculoos cookies were delicious!