Well, the beautiful weather is finally over. This morning we are having light showers, and this week a cold front is coming through. It will be damp and rainy with highs only around 50 by mid week. But the news on the horizon is that this front is not long term. By this weekend, we should be getting better. It was so nice over the weekend, though. All the cafes are open with outside seating, everything is in full bloom here, and the air is clear, dry and just wonderful. Makes it hard to go to work on a Monday. :-)
My question on Friday asked about cakes. One of the first things I found when I got here was that the idea of cake to Germans versus Americans is quite different. In fact, the entire concept of desserts, in general, are quite different.
We got our first clue when I couldn't find cake pans. Since we had to rebuy everything when we came over (we were only allowed to bring 110 lbs. per person when we came over - which was mostly clothes and medicine), and since I love to make cakes, we looked for the pans almost first thing. I was prepared to even live with aluminum pans, but I would have preferred the real things. First, we discovered there is no such thing as aluminum pans in our part of Germany. (I had to have the Thanksgiving turkey roaster brought over by a friend from the US!!) Then, we looked for heavy duty pans. The only things they had were spring-form pans. This is the kind of pan that locks into place to cook usually a cheesecake or torte and unhooks to remove. It is necessary to hold the crumbly crust of a cheesecake in place. Then, we began looking in specialty shops, again to no avail. Finally, I had to ask my mom to send some to me.
Then, I noticed there was no cake mix in the store. Well, that is not entirely true. Rather, there was no "normal" cake mix. They have several variations on vanilla and chocolate pound cake, but otherwise, that is it. They also don't have muffins, except for plain or chocolate chip. It too is considered a dessert item and not a breakfast item. Again, thanks to my mom, mother-in-law and friends, cake mix arrived by mail.
Finally, we noticed in all the bakeries that there was nothing that I recognized as a cake!! They are what I would call a torte - a dense mouse or cream-based round, single-layered dessert. They also had what I would call pie, particularly in the fruit variety. And then they had things like eclairs, chocolate-dipped bananas, and individual dessert pieces that usually had some sort of cream cheese component.
Now I can make a cake from scratch and not from a box, but sometimes, it is really nice to be able to just throw a cake together from the box. And in some cases, like my husband's birthday cake, I wanted it to be that spongy quality that is harder to make from scratch but easy from a box. I also wanted to have the safety of a boxed cake in case the ingredients didn't quite work the same. (Butter here is very different and took me some time to get the amounts right in my recipes.)
I think it is interesting to note, though, that eating cake is really part of a weekend meal tradition. One of the things my students have to tell me each week when we get back together is what they did for the weekend. Almost every student will tell me that on Sunday, they slept "long" (they don't sleep late, but long in German), ate a light breakfast of meats and cheeses, had a quiet day, then had coffee and cake around 4:00 PM. That would be it for the day on what they would eat. When they describe the cake, it is either a pound cake (all the ones I've tried have been very dry and bland) or one of these other desserts that I described that had some fruit component along with cream cheese. But they always called it cake - perhaps because they don't know what else to call it in English.
last week, I went with some friends to a local coffee shop (part of why I couldn't get things done on Thursday), and there I got "Apfelkuchle" thinking it would be that wonderful, warm dessert kinda like a turnover that they have here. When it was served, I was surprised and remarked that it was really what we would call apple pie. They were equally surprised at my remark and started to explain to me what a pie was, which I said was not so much a pie, but what in America we would call a tart or tort, depending on the ingredients. And then it came back to tort being what I call cake, except mine has two layers and is way too sweet. :-) I mentioned that having pie warm is really wonderful. They said that having pie warm was wrong - that if a pie was fresh out of the oven, they would take a walk to let it get cold. Of course I had to laugh at our differences.
Our older son had a friend over not too long ago. I usually try to make something each time someone comes over that is a bit American, from chocolate chip cookies, cake, brownies, to this time, Jello - a special request that my son had had from my mother to send through the mail. His friend remarked that it looked like see-through pudding. We both thought that was strange as pudding is soft and like whip cream in consistency, at which his friend expressed real surprise. He tried the jello, and like other American treats, he exclaimed that he just couldn't eat it - it was too sweet. Maybe it is in the expectation of what a dessert "should" taste like that is fueling this idea of things being too sweet. Later, I did see a commercial advertising pudding. Imagine pudding in the shape of a jello mold. Their pudding here really is the consistency of our jello, but in the flavors of our pudding - and not as sweet. Ironically, I can't eat some of the chocolate here because they are just too sweet. :-)
So you can see there is a running theme to the desserts here - dryer, almost entirely served cold, and somewhat bland in flavor - or as they say, not so sweet. I can't help but wonder if it feeds a stereotype of Americans - icky sweet foods and lack of physical activity. Perhaps. Perhaps the stereotype isn't so far from the mark. But I must admit, I can't pass up American sweets.
The words for today are cake: der Kuchen (coo chen where the "oo" is more like "book" and the "ch" is that cat sound) and dessert: die Nachspeise (nach shpiz eh where the "ch" is that cat sound and the "i" is long as in kite).
The question for the day is "Now we know what Germans eat for dessert, but what do they mostly eat for meat?"
Auf Wiedersehen,
Frau Spitzer
