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Baking in German

 Guten Abend am Samstag Nachmittag!

It's Saturday evening as I start this blog entry. We're shortly going to go to the Vigil service at church, but I have a few minutes to write a few things about another kind of adventure...cooking and baking in Germany.

Well, it's a good thing I can read German. Among the things not findable in Germany are measuring cups and spoons in the measurements we use in the US. The apartment, which is fully furnished, has lots of cooking and baking equipment, but no US measuring vessels. It does have a scale that measures grams, and a container that measures milliliters. -Can I find any US-style measuring cups and spoons at any of the stores? No. Hmmm, okay, so I won't bake...

...Until I volunteer to take the 3rd Sunday of the month to provide the "Kuchen" for Kaffee und Kuchen at coffee hour after church on Sunday this weekend. I'm up for the adventure! So, I go online and look for recipes. Naturally, I look for English-language ones, since it's easier, but that won't work, since it's all in cups and tablespoons. But I can read German, so I look at the German recipes. I've never baked using grams and milliliters before, but why not? After a quick walk up to the nearest grocery store to get more flour, I got to work.

And guess what? I love baking with grams and milliliters! It was so easy, and there were no multitude of measuring cups and spoons to wash. I've rediscovered baking! The apple muffins which I made turned out quite well, too. 

While I'm at it, on the right are two items that I've never seen in a US store. I'm not sure what to do with the Bourbon Vanilla Paste (Germans seem to like that combination, even in ice cream and yogurt), but I used a packet of the Vanilla Sugar, pictured below, to make a topping for the muffins. Ganz lecker!

There are more interesting ingredients which I won't talk about right now, but there are two things missing from the stores that I will mention. One is turkey, the other is frozen or fresh cranberries. Originally, I wanted to make cranberry muffins, but after searching several stores and striking out, I opted for apple ones. Cranberries are just not a German thing, apparently. 

Should I say, apple pie is not as quintessentially an American thing as cranberries???

Gute Nacht. Time for church. 





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Comments

  1. AnonymousNovember 18, 2023 at 7:24 PM

    You’re a German! I would not bake w/o my measurements!

    ReplyDelete

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