Christmas Jumpers and Stollen

Its that time of year again, and thinks are starting to get christmassy! I usually like to wait until December starts, but last Wednesday (30 November) I was invited by some of the girls at work to come along to a Christmas Jumper Make Night at the Science Gallery. 

It's a fantastic idea, participants were asked to bring along a jumper and the Science Gallery provided Christmas themed bits and pieces, and glue guns. Ah, glue guns, I've not used one since wood tech at my old Comprehensive School, and I forgotten how much fun they are ... and how easy it is to burn your fingers! 

The evening was really fun, not just because of the glue guns, and I decorated my jumper. Although, there were some suggestions that mine was a bit too tasteful. I think I put all my creative juices into helping make a jumper with S for someone else, which is going to be a surprise (or should that be shock) when they get it! (I don't have photos of it at the moment but will get some.)

Once I got into the Christmas spirit, I decided to have a go at making a stollen. I've never made one before, a couple of years ago my bread making genius friend WellBread was experimenting with different recipes and produced some lovely examples. I wasn't intending to aim quite so high, and it was probably just as well.

Its not the prettiest stollen I've ever seen, and it is a bit flat. I don't know if I didn't put enough yeast into it, or it wasn't warm enough where I left it to rise, but it still tastes good. The icing sugar is also, not very convincingly, hiding that the Stollen is a bit 'high baked', aka burnt.

I know when WellBread was making Stollen she was aiming for the quality of Lidl Stollen, which she rated very highly. I certainly not at that level, but I'm not down in the Tesco Value range either :)