NIEDEREGGER Stollen Marzipan Cake 500g

NIEDEREGGER Stollen Marzipan Cake 500g

We love stollen. Sometimes, we even bake stollen. But we might stop bothering and just buy this, because if there’s anything better than home-made, it’s masters-of-marzipan Niederegger’s Stollen Cake.

Crammed full of sultanas, lemon and orange zest and spices, brushed with butter and rolled in crushed sugar… if anyone’s going to get this traditional German Christmas treat perfectly right, it’s going to be Niederegger, because after all, they can do what no one else can – fill the centre with finest Niederegger marzipan.

We want one. Or two. Or all of them. In fact, if you manage to get your hands on one, it’s only because we couldn’t afford to buy the whole stock ourselves...

The Niederegger story

Germany's most famous marzipan factory is in the north in Lübeck, and marzipan is undoubtedly the city's biggest export. Johann Georg Niederegger, an outstanding confectioner, established the business in 1806, and the original, time-honoured recipe has stayed exactly the same since then – a mixture of almonds, sugar and an ingredient similar to rosewater that gives the unique Niederegger taste.

With its high almond content, it’s less sweet than many marzipans, keeping the true taste and colour of the finest, aromatic Mediterranean almonds that are used, and only the best, most perfect, golden kernels pass the expert gaze of the eagle-eyed ‘checkers’ once the almonds have been blanched. Niederegger make 30 tons of this incredible marzipan every day, crushing the chopped nuts with sugar between giant granite rollers, heating the paste in copper cauldrons until it’s ready to be cooled, wrapped and rested to develop the fullest potential of the almond aroma. And finally, the secret rosewater-like ingredient is added and the marzipan can be turned into one of over 300 marzipan specialities, from fine pralines to novelty shapes as well as the classic chocolate-coated loaves.