GERMANY: Giant Christmas cake unveilled in Dresden's historic city centre as part of a yearly Christmas tradition.
- 00:00:33
- ITN Source
GERMANY: Giant Christmas cake unveilled in Dresden's historic city centre as part of a yearly Christmas tradition.
Tens of thousands of people have watched a gigantic 3.3 ton "Stollen" Christmas cake ride past on a horse-drawn carriage in the historic eastern German city of Dresden on Saturday (December 9). Pulled by three horses, the monster cake coated in powdered sugar made its way to the "Striezelmarkt" Christmas fair for the 13th annual "Stollenfest" -- where slices of this traditional Saxon cake then went on sale. Baker Walter Saeurig said that "about one hundred bakeries contributed their Stollen parts" to create the monster cake measuring 35 metres long and 1.78 metres wide, as a sign on the carriage proudly announced. Clearly, the contributing bakeries once again fulfilled people's expectations. "I especially like the raisins and the orange peel -- and the rum! It's delicious, I must say," Friedbert Gaertner said. He and his family had driven almost 500 kilometres from the Rhoen region in Bavaria "just for this," he said. "We're really enjoying it," Gaertner added. Slices of 500 grammes each were sold at 3.00 euros (3.99 U.S. dollars). Market visitors had to exchange money for a gold coin known as "Stollenthaler" to be able to purchase a piece. Ingredients included more than 1 ton of flour, close to 300 kilograms of sugar, an unknown amount of butter, about 80 litres of Jamaican rum and, most importantly, close to 3 million raisins. On arrival at the Christmas market the cake was cut by the head baker with an oversized silver-plated "Stollen" knife, measuring 1.2 metres. Legend has it that the most famous of Dresden's cakes was baked for August the Strong. It weighed two tonnes and took 60 bakers to prepare. Horses transported it to the Elector's banquet, where it was sliced with a five-foot knife. The "Dresdner Christstollen", or Dresden Christmas cake, existed long before those eighteenth-century flamboyancies. The Dresden Christmas market, or "Striezelmarkt", held annually since 1434, is named after an old word for the "Stollen", first mentioned in the early fourteenth century.
ITN Source | December 15, 2006
