**Too good to leave soley on my little Coffee of the Week archive**

That's a pic of me, back in wintry Germany, drinking a nice warm white mocha at Starbucks Viernheim.


In yesterday's Age newspaper there were a few articles about Starbucks. If you haven't yet heard, they're closing 70% of their Australian stores. For all affected Starbucks' employees, this must seriously suck. However, what caught my eye about one of the articles wasn't the big economic news, or even the insight into Melbourne's coffee culture. It was the hilariously bad title and captions:


Bean and gone, espresso turns to depresso (Get it, get it??) by Michael Shmith (sic)

The accompanying photo is of a young person drinking a Starbucks coffee, with the caption:
"A long black day at Starbucks".

Ba-dum-tush.

Get it? Because a long black is a type of coffee, but "a long black day" also means that Starbucks is having a tough time. Clever huh??? Not!

We were cracking up yesterday reading the papers over breakfast. It seems that people are paid to write what is essentially the journalistic equivalent of a dad joke.

More Starbucks-related articles available here.

Das ist ein Schokoladenbrötchen. Schokoladen = chocolate, brötchen = little bread roll. It's an odd idea, but no less good for that. In fact, I think they're GREAT! I developed a taste for these whilst in Germany - my host father would eat these often, for dessert or a little snack.

To make a Schokoladenbrötchen, you start with a Brötchen. In Australia the equivalent would be a white dinner roll. I got mine for 50c from Baker's Delight. You want something white and soft.


Then, you need the Schokoladen. In Germany I found they had a larger range of thin, brötchen-sized chocolates, but my local Coles had these funky little Furry Friends chocolates, which were just the right size. And, if you head over to the Furry Friends' website, you can learn about Australian animals! Learning and deliciousness.



If Cadbury's too frightfully common for you, I guess you could use a few pieces of Lindt Excellence, which are the right thickness, but then I think you'd be missing out on the point of this snack. So, chocolate-snobbery thrown to the wind, slice your Brötchen lengthwise, place your chocolate inside, and eat. I had the above Schokoladenbrötchen this afternoon with a cup of tea.

At first, I thought it was odd my host father never heated his Schokoladenbrötchen. Melting chocolate in crispy bread sounds like a winner, no? Below we have a toasted Schokoladenbrötchen that I made in Germany. Check out the oozing chocolate...

... which, upon being eaten, proceeded to ooze over my face, my hands, my arms... it was not a good look! And in fact, I realised that I rather like the contrast of soft bread against solid chocolate.

Another variation:

We ran out of Brötchen one night, but still had heaps of regular old Brot leftover from a cold-cut based dinner... and I thought it might be a good idea...
Brot mit Milka Schokoladen. A chocolate sandwich on brown bread. Not the same as the original, but surprisingly still lecker! (Delicious).

I feel that I should just add here that Schokoladenbrötchens - with their high-GI white bread and fattening, sugary chocolate centre - are almost totally bereft of any nutrition. In the interest of health they should not be consumed every day.

Cooking with yeast is not my thing. However, eating food made from yeast is definitely my thing. Especially Nigella's apple and blackberry kuchen - a sweet yeasted dough, enriched with eggs and topped with blackberries, apples, and a crumble mixture. A quiet weekend in Germany gave me the opportunity to test out some of my (still developing) yeast-baking skills.

Kuchen simply means 'cake' in German, (a topic I researched in great depth whilst in Germany), but Nigella's Apple and Blackberry Kuchen is the German-American version. You start off with the yeasted base....

..., which contains, in addition to flour, salt, sugar and yeast, some eggs, vanilla, lemon zest, milk, butter and cinnamon. I'm sure you can imagine how divine the fragrance is..

Once it's risen (overnight in the fridge, or an hour in a warm spot), it will be soft and springy and doubled in size. My photos make them look the same size, but rest assured, the dough did actually expand. Can you see the stretch marks at the top of the ball?

Once it's risen, you stretch out the dough into a 9x13 inch pan, glaze it with egg-wash, and cover it with fruits and crumble.

This is the crumble mixture, with yummy crunchy almonds:



Once it's baked, it will be risen and divinely fragrant.

It's supposed to be eaten as breakfast, but we had it for afternoon tea with crème fraîche. (It's only 79 euro cents for a tub! Blackberries were cheap there too. *Sigh*). You'll also be able to see from the picture, that it's quite high. It's supposed to be a thinner, burnished and brown slab, but mine turned out high and slightly doughy, although not unpleasantly so. I realised later that the ruler I used to measure the tin was a technische Zeichnerin (technical draftswoman) ruler, which measured increments slightly smaller than inches, undiscernable to the naked eye. Or I just wasn't looking closely enough. Whoops! At any rate, the finished product was really good. We ate about half of it, and I carefully sliced up the remainder and wrapped it up in foil to freeze. Come to think of it, my host family might still have some slices in their freezer! Frau Margit, bitte schicken sie mir kuchen!

*Thanks to everyone who sent me get well soon wishes! Am still not up for typing a whole post with my left hand, so here's another one from my drafts! It's about cake in Germany! Yay!*

Kaffee und Kuchen at some Konditorei in Heidelberg.

I absolutely adore the German tradition of Kaffee und Kuchen, or coffee and cake. We'd usually have it on a Sunday. Papa would drive into town and buy a selection of amazing cakes, come home and brew a pot of coffee, and wait for the relatives to arrive. Other times, we'd be out sightseeing, and I'd insist - and I do mean insist - that we stop at a cafe for a much needed caffeine-break. (Take-away coffees don't seem to be as popular over there as they do in Melbourne, and we all know how much I love my coffees!)

These first few photos are from a Konditorei in Heidelberg...

Shockobanane - chocolate and banana.

Frankfurterkranz - sponge cake layered with cream, covered in crunchy praline.

More of that crunchy praline.


And next up are some kuchen we ate at home.

Bienenstich Kuchen - literally "bee sting cake". 2 layers of sweet yeasted dough, with cream in between, and honey almond praline on top. You'd think you couldn't finish a whole piece, but then you'd be wrong. It's ethereally light and fluffy, all too easy to eat.

Some sort of Swiss roll with raspberry filling.

Selection of cakes! Including Black Forest Cake, Frankfurter Kranz, Sachertorte, Bee Sting Cake, and a Fruit-topped Cake.

Christstollen
Schwarzwalderkirschtorte. (Black Forest Cake). Amazing. The cream has such a different texture to what I'm used to - so fluffy and light, like the inside of a pavlova! The sour cherries, kirsch, chocolate cream, chocolate cake and base make a combination that's out of this world. It was absolutely incredible.


*For anyone who's interested, or may be similarly suffering: I've been living on chicken soup, honey tea and butter menthols for 2 days. My cold is getting slightly better, although my throat is still a bit sore. As for my right hand - it's stuck firmly on a bag of frozen broad beans (my physio told me ice would calm the swelling down), and feels a bit better. Or maybe that's just because it's numb. My left hand is getting surprisingly fast at typing! I promise the Bistro Guillaume post will be coming in the next couple of days!*

This Erdbeer Becher (strawberry cup) is a kleine. Sure guys, sure.

One day in Germany, my host mama took us to the Adami Eiscafé in Worms (pronounced vorms, rhymes with "warm") . Yes, it was the middle of winter, but I really love ice-cream. Adami is in the main square of Worms, and was chock-a-block busy on a cold and blustery day. I'm told that in summer, the entire square is filled with tables and chairs and umbrellas, and usually a long queue of eager patrons.

Ice-cream parlours are a big deal in Germany, much more so than here. I'm not sure if it's because we're more health conscious here, or if Europeans have a greater sense of tradition than us, and are less likely to reject the old-fashioned in favour of the new... whatever. While I was in Germany, many good chats were held over Schokoladen Bechers and a Spaghetti Eis, in various Eiscafés around town. Big cushy chairs, sundaes in big tall glasses, long silver spoons, indecent amounts of cream. (I was on holiday, ok?!) Not a chai soy latte or decaf weak skinny long mac in sight. Love it.

Now, back to the lovely Adami Eiscafé... that gargantuan creation in the first photo is a "small" strawberry cup. Vanilla ice-cream, strawberry ice-cream, strawberry sauce, fresh strawberries, whipped cream, and a wafer (my favourite part).

For me, if there are sweets, there has to be coffee.

A nice cappuccino to complement the sweetness and counteract ice-cream headaches. Although I would have probably done better with a black coffee, rather than a big-ass full-cream milk coffee. I loved the cute little biscuit with the cappuccino cup imprint!

Spaghetti Ice-cream!! I remember these from teahouse menus, when I was in Vienna in '06. My travelling buddy, Clarice and I were a bit "WTF?!" about them, and never got into them. However, on this trip, my host family convinced me that they are, indeed, fabulous.

The basic idea is that vanilla ice-cream is piped into long, thin strands, resembling spaghetti, which is covered in raspberry sauce (representing tomato sauce), and sprinkled with white chocolate shavings (parmesan). Get it? They're standard fare at Eiscafés in Germany and, I think, at other cafes and restaurants. Underneath those strands of ice-cream lie a few pockets of whipped cream, which takes on a whole new dimension when frozen.

Lasagne Eis! Same idea as the Spaghetti Eis, but obviously the ice-cream in big flat sheets rather than spaghetti strands.

It's probably a good thing for me that there isn't a sweet-ass Eiscafé within driving distance of my house. (And if there is, you probably shouldn't let me know about it...)

If you liked Croissant in a Can, you'll love Breakfast in a Box!

The classic, with Speck and eggs.

Bauern Früstück, (literally "Farmer's Breakfast"), consists of fried potato slices, bacon, and eggs. I'm not sure if German farmers actually eat it for breakfast, but the image of a big ol' Bavarian farmer (possibly wearing lederhosen or a funky green hat), up at the crack of dawn, tucking into a big plate of Bauern Früstück, is an appealing image, even if it is a caricature.

I would tend to think of such a dish as a hangover cure, or a quick and treaty supper, rather than a daily breakfast. (I certainly hope so; I can't imagine a Bauern Früstück being a daily breakfast for anyone who wants to live past 50).

In that brightly coloured box, there is a foil package, containing the uncooked breakfast. All you gotta do is fry it in a pan until golden brown and heated through. It doesn't look very attractive when you first squelch it out of the packet and drop it onto the waiting pan...

... but turns a nice golden colour once fried.


A big plate of this, beer, TV. Contentment.

Molten Chocolate Babycakes, baked all-together in one dish. Not quite so baby-like.

In Germany in January, it was prohibitively cold. And the shops were all closed on Sundays. We often stayed in, shopping online, baking, eating, and watching Deutschland sucht den Superstar or Ich bin ein Star - Holt mich hier raus! It's quite interesting (and depressing) to discover that all these reality shows are almost exactly the same all over the world.


Chocolate Molten Babycakes

In the first photo we have Nigella Lawson's molten chocolate babycakes, from How to be a Domestic Goddess. The recipe is supposed to serve 6, and I halved the recipe for 2 of us. (The original recipe has 4 eggs, so I couldn't make only a third of the mixture). We baked it in one large dish as we didn't have little ramekins. Beneath the crackly top lay an incredibly gooey chocolate overload. Woah.

We ate it with crème fraîche. It's easily available in Germany, and good quality versions can be bought very cheaply. What a treat! Here in Australia, I have crème fraîche very rarely - not only is it heart-stoppingly unhealthy, but it's also quite a bit more expensive than regular cream or sour cream.


Nigella's Coca-Cola Cake
I have made Nigella's coca-cola cake numerous times before, always as cupcakes. However, I'd just bought a Kaiser 16cm bundt tin, (for a mere 4,99€ at Woolworths!) and really wanted to try it out! I halved the recipe to fill this small tin. My host mother loved it, and the whole family liked the novelty of the cola kuchen.


Irish Tiramisu

This tiramisu, from Nigella Express was a surprise hit with my host father. I first made it for New Year's Eve, then again for his birthday, and at his insistent request, once more for a work party he was having. Success!


Kiwi Cheesecake
This is actually Nigella's Cherry Cheesecake, from the Retro Rapido chapter of Nigella Express. It is a biscuit base, covered in a softly set cream-cheese mixture. Unlike most of Nigella's cheesecake, it isn't a baked cheesecake, but a refrigerated one. It is densely creamy, with a soft and smooth texture. However, I would have preferred a higher ratio of biscuit base to filling. I love the biscuit base of cheesecakes! I should also add that our kiwi topping, whilst very pretty, wasn't the best choice. The cheesecake is very soft, you see, and when we sliced through the kiwis, we squished the cheesecake most unattractively. I think that the original topping of cherry conserve would be best, or failing that, any very soft fruit.


Chocolate Sour Cream Cake

I have made this cake before, but never with much success. It's from How to be a Domestic Goddess, but a similar cake features in Feast, under the name Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake. I've tried that one too, on recommendation from friends, but didn't love it. For some reason, I could never get the icing to be smooth and luscious like in the book (or like Paola's gorgeous version!), and the cake would always turn out dense and dry.

However, at the first bloggers' banquet last year, Vida brought along a sour cream chocolate cake, made with milk chocolate in the icing. It was delicious! So, when we had 4 tubs of sour cream that needed using up, I thought I'd give her version a go. Nigella's recipe says to use 2 20cm sandwich tins for the cake, but I'd bought a baking tray of cute mini-heart shapes at Aldi, as well as a 20cm heart-shaped cake tin, so I used those. I also thought that by making smaller cakes, instead of one mama sandwich cake, we could avoid a chocolate overload! It turned out to be a good move.



I loved the milk chocolate in the icing! As you can probably see, my icing was still a bit grainy, but it tasted fantastic. I suppose practice makes perfect. I'd love to try this cake again, next time there's a celebration, and see if I can get the soft, smooth, swirly peaks that it's supposed to have!

"Croissant in a Can" was one of my most ecstatic discoveries whilst in Germany this year. Originally from France, bake it right in your own home!

As you can see, the instructions couldn't be simpler.

Ziehen, plopp, drehen, ausrollen, trennen, rollen, backen!
(Pull, pop, twist, roll out, split, roll up, bake!)

1. Ziehen the tab on the can, then plopp it open!
2. Drehen the can to get the dough out.

3. Ausrollen the dough, and trennen it along the perforations.

4. Rollen the pieces into croissant shapes.

We filled half of them with Zartbitterschokolade.
5. Backen the croissants at 180C for 10-15 minutes.

Impressively fluffy! They're so quick to make, and fill the kitchen with a lovely aroma first thing in the morning. They were a little bit smaller and dryer than patisserie-bought croissants, but I loved them all the same.

In Nigella Express, Nigella has a similar recipe for chocolate croissants made with puff pastry, which I think would make a worthy substitute now that I'm back in Australia where, sadly, we have no croissant-in-a-can.

A weekend breakfast at Ikea is a family treat, hugely popular in Germany. It's very cheap (it's Ikea, after all), at about 4 euro a person, depending on what you order. On my tray, above, we have a pretzel, 2 bread rolls, scrambled eggs, salami, cheese and teeny-tiny Nurnberger sausages. Ooh, and coffee!!! Unlimited hot drinks - coffee, tea, heisse Schokolade, whatever. Can you imagine how hyper I got after this? Whoooooooooooooooooooo whooo! Let's go shopping and buy a cheap couch!

My host mother's more sedate plate.

For those of you who don't travel much, let me tell you that Ikea is exactly the same all over the world.

One thing I love about Germany is the fact that mega-marts and giant supermarkets will inevitably have a food stand or two nearby. (Giant supermarkets, of course, are yet another reason I love Germany). Once you've spent a good few hours shopping through the endless aisles at MediaMarkt, Aldi, or Real, you'll start to feel a bit peckish. I always chose something small and snacky for myself, as you can see below. However, fear not if your hunger is larger - doner kebabs, Fleischkaese bread rolls (thickly sliced meat with a fantastic sausage flavour), fries, and more are also available. I even saw one van, full of dozens of whole roast chickens, slowly turning on spits and getting delightfully, stickily bronzed. Impressive, I know!

In the first photo of this post, you can see a gigantic pile of Berliners (jam donuts). I could have just bought 1, but they're cheaper (per donut) if you buy 3. As Dr. Zoidberg would say, I'll take 8!!!

Yummy donuts...

As much as I love Berliners, I cannot live on donut alone, so here are some other snacks I had whilst in Germany.

A richly buttered pretzel...


A salty cheese-covered pretzel...

Or my favourite, Quarkinis. These are mini donuts, containing Quark (German cottage cheese) in the batter. I do believe that the acidity of the Quark is what makes these little donuts so tender. They're about 2 euro for 5 at any bakery, and dangerously easy to eat.

Quarkini und Kaffee. The breakfast of champions.

On a little aside, I'm on a self-imposed detox this week (no coffee, no coke, no chocolate, no junk food and so on). I could really, really, go for some donuts right now.

Sigh...