As I had made a marzipan-filled kringle for the family Christmas dinner coffee table two years in a row, I decided to make a quark kringle at home. There were so many bits and pieces left over from the previous day’s baking that I only needed to buy apples and quark.
For the dough you need:
250 ml milk
1 packet dried yeast or 25 g fresh yeast
500 g flour
about 50 g sugar
80 g butter or margarine
2 eggs
Quark filling:
2–3 packets quark
100–150 g sugar (depending on how sweet you want it and whether the quark is plain or sweetened)
3 tbsp vanilla custard powder
50 g butter
2 apples, about 50 g dried cranberries and a handful of raisins.
Icing:
Whatever you prefer. For chocolate icing:
100 g chocolate
3–4 tbsp whipping cream
I made this icing:
200 g icing sugar
2 tbsp raspberry syrup (easily replaced with lemon or orange juice, for example)
2 tbsp hot water
I decorated it with chopped nuts.
First I measured 500 g flour into a bowl and mixed in the dried yeast and sugar. I let the butter come to room temperature, cut it into small pieces and added it to the flour. I warmed the milk to a little above room temperature, about 30–35°C by feel, and mixed one egg into the milk. I had heard somewhere that dried yeast likes slightly warmer liquid. Then I started kneading. I kneaded until the dough became elastic and glossy and no longer stuck to the bowl or my hands. I actually like this method, even though it is tedious. A friend once told me to just add more flour, but I knead until my hands come completely clean of dough. I dusted the surface with flour (my mother taught me that this keeps the yeast vapours in and helps it rise better; whether that is true or not, I always do it because that is how my mother taught me), covered the bowl with a towel and left it somewhere warm to rise for an hour. I used to make a sponge first, but these days I have given up on that 🙁
While the dough was becoming fluffy, I cut the apples into small pieces and mixed them with the raisins and cranberries. I added the sugar and vanilla custard powder to the quark and mixed it together.
Once the dough had risen for about an hour and almost doubled in size, I rolled it into a rectangle on a floured surface and spread it with room-temperature butter. I put the quark mixture down the centre, scattered the apple-cranberry-raisin mixture over it and rolled it up. I shaped the roll into what I considered a heart and left it to rise for about exactly another hour.
Then I brushed it with egg and put it into a 200°C oven. My oven heats from the top, so I placed it on the lowest shelf to let it rise a little before browning; that way the crust that forms on top does not crack as it rises. After about 15 minutes I checked what was happening and moved it to the middle of the oven. I baked it until nicely browned on top, another 15–20 minutes or so. I did not time it exactly. There was no point checking with a skewer because there is quark inside and the skewer would come out damp anyway.
I put the kringle on the table to cool, moistened the crust well with lukewarm water and covered it with paper, then put a terry towel over the paper. Again, my mother taught me that this keeps the crust from becoming hard. Sometimes, like she did, I even put a plastic bag between the paper and the towel.
Once it had cooled, I made the icing by mixing icing sugar with syrup and hot water. I drizzled it over the kringle and sprinkled chopped nuts on top.
