I just baked your stollen recipe today, and it is absolutely YUMMY. Where I come from in Germany it is called "Quark Stollen", and it is eaten almost year round, although I have never had it at Christmas time, because that time was reserved for "Dresdner Stollen", which I have never liked. I have two recipes for this stollen, and I compared both of them to your recipe. Both of them have almost the same ingredients as yours, except the proportions are slightly different, and both of them make only one big loaf, rather than your two loaves, which seems to be the biggest difference. The first one came from the mother of a college friend of mine. She would send her daughter care packages with this stollen, and my friend and I would devour them. I still have wonderful memories. The second one came from my Polish sister-in-law, who is an excellent baker. But I will send both of these ladies your recipe and let them decide for themselves. Instead of the ricotta cheese I used "quark" which I made myself by draining non-fat plain yoghurt in my Melitta coffee filter. But ricotta is probably a good substitute. In any case, this recipe beats the traditional Christmas Stollen hands down. Thank you very much. I am always looking forward to your recipe posts, because they are reliable and reliably good. Irene, thanks for sharing - I love hearing about the provenance of recipes. Around and around and around they go... I drain yogurt in our Wave yogurt drainer to make creamy Greek-style yogurt from plain lowfat yogurt - usually I just make tzatziki, but next time I'll try it in this stollen. I know quark is very similar to ricotta, and I've even seen it in our grocery here. Happy holidays! PJH

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