Früchtebrot is a holiday fruit and nut bread, sliced into rounds into bite size pieces. It's not overly sweet or salty. The flavors of fruits, nuts, and cognac meld together to form a perfect holiday loaf. It makes three logs which can be sliced into rounds. Wrap logs in parchment paper and string for a homemade holiday gift. This recipe is from Essen und Trinken, a great website for recipes. You'll notice in this recipe grams are not converted to cups. Thanks to a colleague and friend of mine, I received a kitchen scale for Christmas. For those without a kitchen scale, try using the cooking conversion calculator from Gourmet Sleuth.  I've had success using this online converter.

Früchtebrot
Recipe from Essen & Trinken
Makes roughly 3- 12" logs

Note: the original recipe called for equal amounts of dried apricots, plums, apples and figs. In place of 100 g dried apples, I added an additional 50 g dried apricots and 50 g chopped dates. Any variety of dried fruit will work well in this recipe.

100 g dried plums (roughly 11 plums), chopped
100 g dried figs, chopped
150 g dried apricots, chopped
50 g dried dates, chopped
50 ml cognac (equivalent to a trial size bottle- the original recipe calls for whisky)
50 g pine nuts
50 g flaked almonds, divided in half
50 g pistachios, peeled
1 Tablespoon of allspice
1 Tablespoon of dry yeast
100 g all purpose flour
1/3 cup of water in a small bowl and a pastry brush, set aside

Marinate dried fruit with cognac in a medium size bowl for approximately 30 minutes. The dried fruit will soak up the liquid.

Meanwhile, chop the pine nuts with pistachios. Add one portion of the flaked almonds to the nut mixture. In a separate bowl, combine flour, yeast, and allspice. Combine half of the nut mixture with the flour and yeast. Knead in the dried fruit mixture. Knead thoroughly. Form into three separate logs of equal length approximately 12" long and 1 1/5" wide. Spread the remaining flaked almonds on a sheet of parchment paper. Brush each log with water that has been set to the side. Roll each log into the flaked almond mixture. Let each log rest for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees while the logs rest. Bake for 25 minutes or until lightly golden brown. Cool completely before slicing into 1 cm thick rounds. Line rounds onto a sheet of parchment paper or sandwich paper, roll, and tie each end with string to give as a gift over the holidays.