What is stollen? The German cake that Donald Trump keeps accidentally promoting through misspelled posts

Stollen is a Christmas delicacy consisting of dried fruits, nuts, and powdered sugar that originated in Germany

Donald Trump prompted food connoisseurs to think about a specific German delicacy after he misspelled a word in a now-deleted tweet.

On 20 August, the president of Lynchburg, Virginia’s Liberty University and son of the well-known Southern Baptist Pastor, Jerry Falwell Jr, took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to defend Trump against Robert S Mueller III’s two-year investigation. “Trump should have two years added to his first term as payback for time stolen by this corrupt failed coup,” he wrote.

The former President of the United States responded with a message that didn’t exactly elicit the response he was hoping for due to a not-so-subtle typo. Trump wrote: “Despite the tremendous success that I have had as President, including perhaps the greatest ECONOMY and most successful first two years of any President in history, they have stollen two years of my (our) Presidency (Collusion Delusion) that we will never be able to get back…”

The original tweet was soon removed from the platform following multiple comments from other users about how they assumed he was talking about stollen, a special bread enjoyed by many during Christmas in Germany.

One user posted a picture of the holiday treat with the caption: “At first, I thought you were talking about stollen, the delicious German bread we eat at Christmas. Then I remembered that you’re an uneducated potato that can’t spell. My bad.”

According to the Dresdner Stollen, the origin of the baked good can be traced back to “a bill at a Christian hospital called St Bartholomew’s” in 1474. Here, it was referred to as “a cake for the fasting period, consisting of only flour, oats and water as required by Church dogma,” per a report on the Kitchen Project.

Stollen typically consists of “candied fruit, currants, orange, and lemon zest, spice, and cardamom spices for flavouring.” Some Dresdeners claim the first-ever stollen was made in 1329 when the Bishop of Nauruburg proposed a contest during Christmas time, in which bakers presented him with bread that had desirable ingredients. The bishop reportedly chose stollen as his winner, prompting him to buy grain meant to be used only for the pastry.

Kitchen Project explained the word means “a post or boundary stone for a city”.

“It also could be the entrance to a mine shaft. Some historians believe that the shape of this bread reminded the locals of the entrance to a mine tunnel reflecting the silver and tin mining in the area of Dresden,” the German cooking blog states.

The city in Germany supposedly loved the baked goods so much they set aside particular utensils to only be used when eating stollen. “It was also tradition that the first piece of stollen was set aside and kept to ensure the family would be able to afford a stollen the following year and the last piece saved to ensure the family had enough food for the year,” according to the Kitchen Project.

Stollen is also referred to as “Christollen” because modern recipes for the pastry call for a light coating of powdered sugar like the “Christ Child wrapping in the blanket,” per The Washington Post. However, when stollen was first introduced in the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church didn’t allow bakers to use “luxury ingredients” like butter throughout Lent and Advent.

Pope Innocent VIII eventually dissolved the ban partly in Dresden, but with a stipulation that every baker would have to pay a tax for their use of the ingredients during the times they were previously not allowed. The Washington Post concluded that the official lift of the ban came when the state, Saxony, became Protestant.

Trump subsequently republished his message on X but ensured “stolen” was spelled correctly.