There were lots of highlights about Christmas, but the first in chronological order was an entire day with which to make Christmas Stollen.  Yay!  (And a borrowed kitchen that was very kindly allowed to become ridiculously messy before it got clean again.)

This was last year’s batch, but this year’s looked more or less the same.  In the end.  Somewhere in the middle of the process, I forgot to add the butter.  Yep.  All of the butter.

After the dough had risen and I had mixed in all of the extras, I poured a stick and a half of melted butter right on top and worked it in as best I could.  And added some flour.  And kneaded some more.

Extra kneading isn’t really great for this recipe, but it survived.  Sigh.  Don’t forget a key ingredient, folks.  You’ll be sorry.  And your fingers will be buttered up in a way that isn’t great.

But you know what’s nice?  There were not four, but eight loaves of stollen produced in our kitchen this year, so there’s plenty for New Year’s and Easter and some other yet-to-be-determined holiday.  Christmas all year long!

Merry Christmas from Butter Hands Hannah and her very nice husband, who only made fun of her a little bit for forgetting all of the butter.