Are German Christmas Sweets Any Good? 🎄🇩🇪

As Americans living in Germany we taste test some of the most traditional German Christmas sweets to see what we think! Let us know your favorite Christmas sweets in Germany and if we missed any, so we can try them while living abroad in Germany!

👩🏽‍💻👨🏼‍💻 CONNECT WITH US

🤔 WHO IS MY TRAVEL BF?
We are Mike and Becca, two passionate travelers who love traveling deep and experiencing a place through its food, history, and culture.

⏩ CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
0:21 Dominosteine
1:20 Zimtsterne
2:25 Stollen
3:49 Schoko Spekulatius
5:06 Lebkuchen
7:30 Marzipan Kartoffeln
9:02 Bonus Sweet
9:38 Best German Christmas Sweet

#germany #tastetest #christmasfood

[Kivas_Fajo]

You should get those not from a company in a plastic pack, but from a good bakery...and then maybe also in plastic packed, but it's more like "homemade"
Zimtsterne should be soft and moist, not hard and dry.

[panther]

The Stollen you got was a quite cheap brand, produced in a large factory. So the quality was probably not very high (also it was very small, traditional Stollen are are between 2 and 4 times as large). I don't blame you, I just want to point out that Stollen made in an actual artisan bakery or even at home are usually much better. My family always buys them in our lokal bakery or gets them from Dresden, where they originated. But I live in Saxony, so I don't know if there are good hand-made Stollen available in other regions. They are very important to us and the ones from Dresden actually have protected origin labels.

[Kivas_Fajo]

The "rice paper" is called Oblaten and can be found in the bakery goods section of a supermarket.
It's something like a soft wafer...

[heha]

Marzipan potatoes are named after their look, they almost look like little Kartoffeln due to the cinnamon on the surface. And they are my favorite ones. But as some have mentioned, for the first try you never should buy no name products but well known brands esp. the Nürnberger Lebkuchen (Wicklein, Schmidt, Haeberlein-Metzger) or anything wiht marzipan (Lübecker Marzipan!). They are worth the price! Ein schönes und ruhiges Weihnachtsfest! 😘

[celine]

Schmalzkuchen (very common on christmas markets) is one thing that should be mentioned as a typical Christmas treat.
And if you have the opportunity to get some selfmade "Nussecken", you may try those too.

[arnodobler]

Go to a local bakery and buy christmas cookies
okay a little bit pricy, but 🤷‍♂

[chuckcooper]

As the other comments report, Industry cookies and cakes are never as good as homemade...like comparing pumpkin pie from Walmart to home made pie. Most families have fun baking cookies with the children...but of course some specialties from other cities, like Stollen from Dresden, Pinten from Aachen, Lebkuchen from Nürnberg or Baumkuchen von Salzwedel are bought....but not buying the cheapest sort from EDEKA ("gut und günstig"). We have not Seen you at the Christmas Market on the Lister Meile...today it is too wet!

[ingevonschneider]

You must bake your own Weihnachtsgebäck, dont buy packaged stuff from the store. And dont say anything negative against Stollen or you get evicted.

[mogon]

Do Christstollen honor and don't taste the cheapo store brand from Edeka. Get a real Dresdner Christstollen. Only if you don't like THAT, you know that you don't like Christstollen. ;-)
Same for the Lebkuchen. Anything that has Edeka on the label is their own store brand. They are not necessarily bad, often they come from the same manufacturer as branded products, but often, they really don't taste quite as good as the original. Good ingredients don't come for cheap. The more complex a product, the more they have to compromise for cheap prices. On the other hand, simple products like milk are just that, simple. Whether it says JA! on the label or Weyenstephan, they usually come from the same local dairy coop, and the quality is the same. Not so with things like Stollen, where ingredients and workmanship make the difference.

Other supermarket-chain-specific no-name brands are Gut&Günstig, JA!, or many things that you can buy at Aldi, Netto, Penny, or Lidl. There are whole websites dedicated to comparisons between brand products and store-brands. For some big brands, manufacturing the store-brands has even become economically more important than their own brands. In Germany, they have taken over large parts of the market. Again, they are nor necessarily bad, but they are usually not setting the standards. ;-) So, don't start your taste-experiments with the cheap store-brands, start top-down and settle with the best price/taste relation. ;-)


Take care and have fun!

[hape]

Haha, there is no ginger at all in none of them! The "paper" is a wafer, as in communion wafers in church, just a runny dough of only wheat flour and water, baked on low temp in order not to let them get brown.

[geneviere]

Every of us Germans probably has different likes and not likes of the store products for Xmas. I e.g. like a fruit taste and marzipan. And chocolate. But apart from Spekulatius - that I love dunked into coffee but not without - I like Xmas products that aren't to dry. My favourite Lebkuchen are e.g. Cocosella Lebkuchen that have a little coconuttaste and are very soft. Stollen I prefer with a Marzipan filling - and they taste different from producer to producer. I like German fruitbread with lots of nuts and dry fruits - it is not cake sweet and very often a less processed flour is used.

You should dry different products of one article to really decide what you like and what not. If you like Marzipan dry the "Baumstämme" that are offered from different brands. It is Marzipan in form of a log covered by chocolate.

[rogerlynch]

SPECUATIUS COOKIES using traditional PROTESTANT CHRISTIAN topics, , in your casw int was !" THE HAEVENLY JERULASEM "