Dutch Baby

(will be re-posted to February 5, when I cooked it)

I am always searching for more interesting ways to cook food that is simple enough that the kids will eat it, yet interesting enough that I am not bored by it, and that is relatively fast to make. This dish, called a Dutch Baby, seemed to fit the requirements. I first saw it mentioned on Simply Recipes, called a Dutch Baby and then rummaged around the internets a bit and also found them on Smitten Kitchen, called German Pancakes. I like the second recipe (Deb Perelman's) better (fewer ingredients) so that's what you see above. Incredibly simple.

I made two of them, topped one with raspberries out of the freezer (macerated, while the pancakes, were cooking with just a little OJ and sugar), and split one Dutch Baby between the German and myself and the other (they had theirs with much more powdered sugar) between my two girls.

We were all pleased.

German Pancakes, aka Dutch Babies

(based on Smitten Kitchen's recipe above)

• 4 eggs
• 1/2 T sugar
• 1/2 t salt
• 1 cup flour
• 2/3 cup milk
• 2 T room temp butter
• some vanilla, or lemon juice, or orange juice, or cinnamon, to taste

Pre-heat oven to 200C, butter two 9 inch cake pans or pyrex pie plates. Crack eggs into bowl and mix until light yellow (using beater or stab mixer). Add remaining ingredients and continue beating. Pour into pans and bake 20 minutes, then reduce temperature to 175C and bake an additional 10 minutes. Watch last 5 minutes to make certain it does not overcook.

Traditionally served with lemon slices, powdered sugar, and a ridiculous amount of melted butter (which we don't ever do).

Can macerate unsweetened fresh or frozen fruit with citrus juice and sugar, and top pancakes with it either hot or cold. Or powdered sugar. Or maple syrup. Or what tickles your fancy.

Fast, easy, and looks impressive.

Carrot- Ginger- Miso Soup

When I made the Carrot-Ginger- Indian Spice soup, I said that I would circle back after trying a Carrot-Ginger-Miso soup that I had seen. And so I have.

I started with this recipe from Smitten Kitchen and changed it up a bit by looking at this from Chef's Blade, which was taken from the Candle Café Cookbook. And some of it (like the celery and lack of sesame) is because I just like it that way

(I actually think that celery, carrots, onions and garlic are the holy quartet, and should always be sauteed in olive oil together).

Carrot Ginger Miso Soup

olive oil

lots of Carrots (I used about 1.5 kg/3= lbs, cut in coins)

2 onions (diced)

6-8 stalks celery, diced.

3-4 cloves of garlic, sliced

lots of sliced, peeled ginger root (I used two thumbs worth)

red miso, 1/2 cup (or less to taste)

4-6 cups water

scallions to garnish

I heated the oil in a small stock pot, then sauteed the onions for 5 minutes, after which I added the garlic and sauteed. Then I added the carrots and celery and sauteed for another 10 minutes, stirring occassionally until softening up a bit. I added the ginger and salt and pepper (starting with 1 T salt/pepper) while sauteeing. Then I added the water (started with 4 cups) and covered the pot and let it simmer for 30 minutes, checking to see that the water was sufficient. If the carrots feel done at this point, pull out the stab-mixer and start pureeing. I needed to add 1 cup water while doing this. Then grab the miso (I started with 1/4 cup), mix it up with a fork in a bowl with a cup of hot water (I used the waterboiler) and add it to the soup and mix in. While tasting, I wound up adding 1/4 cup more (to make a total of 1/2 cup). Let it simmer a bit more, add salt and pepper to taste (it's probably salty enough from the miso) and serve with chopped scallions if you like.

Takes about 30 minutes total. You can use vegetable stock in addition to the water if desired (I was out). The spouse ate it all- he liked it more than I and I was eating the vegetarian chili while he was making his very happy way through this over the next several days. He votes this his favorite soup so far.

Cauliflower-Ginger-Potato Soup

Part of my goal of feeling healthier this year is, of course, eating healthier. I'm never going to be able to get a healthy can of soup off the shelf in Germany, but now that I can find natural and MSG-free stock, I'm going to be making a lot more soup. And since the kids are very happy just to have a quick chicken-noodle (while I'm not), I'll be experimenting more.

The last soup was a big hit with the German, myself, and Ian (who tells me that he has had an issue posting comments- if anyone else has, would you drop me a line at bigappletobigbear (at) googlemail.com so I can see if there's a general issue?). I'll be following up tomorrow with a miso version and will add it to that post, but yesterday I made Cauiflower-Ginger-Potato soup. I started off thinking I could make it parve again, but I'm afraid I went, ahem, too far with the cayenne pepper and wound up needing to add a liter of 2% milk to calm it down. The German says it's still a bit spicy, but good with the milk added.

I started with the allrecipes.com Creamy Cauliflower with Ginger soup and changed it up a bit.

Cauliflower-Ginger-Potato Soup

• olive oil (enough to simmer the vegetables)
• a head of cauliflower, roughly broken (I picked up organic and it was the best I have ever had- I may need to consider buying organic cauliflower deliberately in the future)
• turmeric (I didn't have fresh, but it's definitely better. Just wear plastic gloves when scraping it or know that you fingers will be dyed a rich golden color)
• cayenne pepper
• 4 cloves garlic, sliced
• onion, large dice
• thumb+'s worth of peeled and sliced fresh ginger root
• 2 blocks Knorr vegetable MSG-free bouillon
• 6 cups boiling water
• a bunch of garam masala (is any recipe with ginger not better with garam masala?)
• cayenne pepper to taste (don't do what I did- throw a bunch in)
• an extra potato or two, peeled and quartered (thrown in to calm the cayenne down in my case, but also making it smoother and thicker)
• 2/3-1 liter 2% milk (you can use whole if desired)
• salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil in a stock/soup pot until it shimmers.

Then add the onions and sautee for 5 minutes.

Add turmeric and garam masala, to taste or a T+ each. Add cayenne pepper, but start with 1t and add more toward the end of cooking, when you can actually taste it.

Add cauliflower (and if you will use the potatoes, add them here as well)and continue to sautee 10 minutes.

Add garlic and ginger and sautee 2 minutes (add more oil if required).

Then add bouillon blocks and boiling water, stir, cover, bring to boil then lower to simmer for 20 minutes.

Use an immersion blender to puree the soup. Adjust spices. Add milk to taste and re-adjust spices, particularly salt and pepper.

The original recipe was 8 servings at 144 cal- this would be less: more (lower fat) milk, but more olive oil, 2x the fluid with far fewer calories. Our servings are more than a cup and we have more than 10.

Enjoy!

Before we leave

Pancakes.

And I had to make this 4 times (T2 gave out on the 4th round, so I could have some).

So doubling the recipe is now a given and I'm guessing that as my 5 and 8 year olds continue to grow a quadrupling will also become standard.

Honey Cake

I made this in a gugeltopf for Rosh Hashonah this year, but I wasn't satisfied: it came out too dense and thick. Perhaps, in an excess of joy with using my KitchenAid mixer, I overbeat it?

Honey Cake
1 3/4 c. honey
1 c. coffee 2x strength (made with 1/2 the water, that is)
4 eggs
2T vegetable oil
1 c sugar (225 g)
3 1/2 c. flour (1c= approx 120 g 3.5=420 g)
pinch salt
1 t. baking soda
2 t. baking powder
1 t. allspice, 1 t. cinnamon
juice of 1 orange

Preheat oven to 325F/160C.
Bring honey to a boil, cool and add coffee.
Beat eggs until light and then add oil. Beat and add sugar.
Add all dry ingredients together, then alernate dry and liquid.
Pour into greased bundt pan and bake for approximately 1 hour (check).
Invert to cool, remove from pan after 10 minutes (not immediately!).

For me, this tasted more like a dense honey bread, not very sweet, and held for days. I sent my friends off to Paris with a big hunk of it two days later and they had it for breakfast and still enjoyed it. But I don't remember it being this dense.

What I've been doing while I wasn't here...part 2 Aug 2011

And more that we did this month, with a few photos to relieve the eye...

• T2 entered as a vorschulkind into her last year before Grundschule, complete with Winnie-the-Pooh small schultuete. It hurts my feelings a bit when she tells me, "Mama, go!" But at least she hugs and kisses me before she sends me on my way. I'm glad that we didn't push for her to go to first grade this year, as she is enjoying it so. Erste Klasse won't be a bed of roses and I think she will have a grand time this year in kita.
• We went for a weekend religious retreat and really enjoyed the warm feeling, although it was a bit hectic because the following Monday—
• School started again, with T1 switching teachers (which makes us sad because we loved her old one). And wow- is 3rd Klasse incredibly harder than 1st or 2nd! (Kita resumes far earlier than school starts, at least here in Berlin.)
• We went to Amsterdam for the concert at the Hotel Pulitzer and found that suite 273 was charming, bright and airy. We met a lovely expat couple (Mexican and Portugese, respectively) and I need to send them some photos. We had "won" a package and we had :the weekend in a gorgeous suite (more bathrooms than we have at home!), a walking tour with visits to a historic distillery and a cheese cave, a wonderful meal with accompanying wines and a sommelier to guide us (and including what I think is the best piece of beef we have yet had in Europe), a boat tour through the canals, pontoon side seats during the Prinsengracht/Pulitzer concert (the director sat next to us, when he sat) and an invitation to the after party: we sat on a garden bench and "people watched", wondering who the people were that all the others were fawning over (our best guess:Dutch nobility).
• While we were in Amsterdam, the children were enjoying the Soester Fehde and I was a bit jealous: if I had known this existed, I might not have tried for our Amsterdam package but instead enjoyed this! They also did some boating and swimming with their cousins.
  
• T1's Zahnspange lost a piece while being brushed (with a soft toothbrush!). She needed to go for another impression and will get a new upper plate next week.
• The German shifted his Munich workweek a bit and came home to go to the "Faces of the Renaissance" exhibit at the Bode Museum (in partnership with the Met): it was gorgeous. The Bode itself was a lovely , extremely and ornate, gilded piece, but the exhibit was fabulous. We took a guided tour with my women's club and I'm sorry that we did: once again, I find the audio guides to be infinitely superior to a single human as guide. No matter how much that person knows, it won't be as much as the many erudite and recondite sources who put together the audio guide, nor will she have her own period soundtrack or the ability to be put on pause while one gazes and ponders. I'll probably make a repeat visit, with audio guide. During the tour, I took lots of photographs (I asked, as always, at the door and was told it would be fine with no flash): at the end of the tour, the guide told me that in this special exhibit, photos were not allowed (due to the many private owners of individual paintings collected) so I was lucky. Strange that no guard stopped me if it was actually forbidden, though.
  
• I took a bread course, an African cooking course, a Persian cooking course and a vegetarian Persian cooking course. I enjoyed them all, even though a woman in the bread class informed me, as I was discussing sourdough starters with the teacher (a Master Baker), that the US has only "squishy" bread. I asked if she had ever been in the US and she told me no, although her friend had told her all about it. The folks in the African and Persian courses were much more friendly and open. I wonder if there is some correlation between taking a cooking course in a foreign cuisine and not having negative stereotypes about foreign cuisine? (Perhaps that's a bit obvious:-)).

Now I have posted these, perhaps I can get going on some more current posts! I can say that I may expand on some of these and re-post as individual pieces, but I seem to never get around to doing it.

Cooking courses at the VHS

My birthday present from the German, amongst other items, was the gift of time: I abandoned the family and took several cooking courses through the VHS system. I enjoyed them all, in their varied ways.
In addition to garnering many interesting recipes and having the opportunity to decide how I like various dishes (and how I might alter them from the originals), I very much enjoyed having the opportunity (while on vacation from my language course, which starts up again next week) to actually speak to Germans, in their native habitat, so to speak. It's good to know that, even though I feel completely incompetent in German, I can follow a teacher and communicate with Germans without them needing a dictionary. I have taken several other cooking glasses at the VHS (including jamming) but I actually feel that my cooking vocabulary grew by leaps and bounds this past week and I had a great time.

The photos you see (above and here) are: a Hirse mit Muskatnuss, Orangenblütenwasser und Quark (from Senegal— the dish with pomegranate seeds), Saffron Basmati rice with "layered"(smothered) ground lamb with young peas and fresh dill (Persia), a watermelon and goat cheese salad (Persia), Schwarzen Augenbohnen-Bällchen (black-eyed peas) frittiert with veggies and chili (Senegal and it really wound up bread-like), and the first baklava I have ever liked (made with less than half the sugar and honey of a Turkish baklava and tremendously refreshing without being nauseatingly sweet). I will certainly be making some of these dishes again (particularly the non-pictured but delicious joghurt, aubergine and zucchini dips) as well as the mains and deserts (although I will need to cut the recipes to a third!).

Although I enjoyed all 4 courses that I took, the 2-day bread course was really fantastic: the garlic baguettes that we made were out of this world! I may have to take that again, because the specific folding techniques that create the baguette (rather than simply the dough) are a bit intricate and I'm not certain that I have them down.
In the bread photo, one sees (my breads):

• the garlic baguette (with the dough having been cut with scissors, rather than just slashed, therefore producing more crust)
• a roggenbrot
• a zwiebelkuchen (this is the vegetarian one made for me, made with potato starch as a binder rather than egg, with yoghurt instead of creme fraiche and with cheese instead of pig— it was actually the best I have ever had, but I still prefer pizza)
• and a "pirate bread", which is a half roggenbrot/half Weizenmehl with onions and read and green peppers baked throughout (therefore a pirate's hoard, as it were)
  

The final photo is of our bread teacher, a master baker, discussing some of the finer points of the sauerteig we were using (which is absolutely not sourdough as Americans know and love it). This class was 75% male, which was amusing since of the other three classes: 1 had 1 male, 1 had none, and the third had two husbands accompanying their wives. Bread making is considered a very male occupation here in Germany (and after kneading a dough that made 10 loaves, I can tell you that without a machine, it requires real muscle)

What I've been doing while I wasn't here...part 1 Aug 2011

It's been a pretty busy month and it's hard to grab enough time to really blog about it.

• We went blueberry picking.
• I had an appointment with a neurosurgeon and a quick follow-up MRI. Physical therapy should start as soon as I make an appointment.
• The German and I went to a Sting concert in Rome at the Cavea dell'Auditorium Parco della Musica. We stayed at the Westin Excelsior and were upgraded to a suite that was incredible. And it was just a tiny suite compared to the suite we were connected to as part of one of the largest suites in Europe (we were told that Prince had stayed— in our small section—there recently). I haven't really thought of myself as a Sting fan— we grabbed the opportunity because it was offered to us as a package and because I love Rome and will always take the opportunity to visit it. But this concert was amazing: leaving aside the wonderful weather (Rome was having a cold spell after the previous week's 40C and was at a perfect 28C, with all the Romans wearing coats and scarves), the venue had perfect acoustics and was charming and intimate. At our pre-party, we could see Sting and some of his people testing instruments and listening to sound levels. At the concert, we had front-row seats and it was wonderful. The open sky, the seductive breeze, the music with a full orchestra.... We were given a copy of Sting's Symphonicities (a pun on his earlier Synchronicities)and the concert that we saw and heard was far better than the one recorded on the CD. What a wonderful concert and the La Fenice orchestra was also wonderful.
  
• I had a major dental work done:-(. But it went well:-). Of course my American expat insurance classified it incorrectly as something reimbursed at a lower rate: what would our last two months on expat insurance be if it did not include arguing with the insurance company? I can say from personal experience that more than 80% of our claims are automatically denied or classified incorrectly or paid at the wrong rate and that, after argument and re-submission, they are indeed correctly paid. Sometimes it has required 4 calls and re-faxes of information(they "lose"scan and sends). I cannot wait until we are on German public insurance and I am very pleased to say that time is rapidly approaching.
  
• We took the children for a boat tour on the Spree and it was surprisingly sunny— enough so that I got a bit of a sunburn and the kids were enervated. We aren't used to any sun in this summer without a summer!

—continued in the next post, so that one's eyes aren't overloaded...

Happy Birthday!

It's been a busy week and it's going into a busy week. The middle of this two week period was T2's birthday party. We had a party for her and her friends (and T1 got to bring a friend along) on the weekend.
They seemed to all enjoy themselves.
We aren't quite certain why Germans will not RSVP, no matter how one asks, but at this point we are used to calling to confirm attendance (important because we also saw a puppet show Rumpselstiltskin and therefore it was necessary to be timely and for us to have a headcount). I made my standard chocolate cake with the requisite pink frosting and purple and white sparkling sugar.

That was followed with Monday's cake for her class and the cake for the last day of my class this semester. I actually ran out of butter for my third cake this week and had to use sprinkled powdered sugar and sparkling sugar for a frosting for T2 and make a French Yogurt Cake (with rose water) for my cake (as it used olive oil rather than butter). I was very glad to reach the end of the baking until next month!

The rest of the week will be practice Seders and buttoning up next month's newsletter.

(Darn- I am wrong. T2 is Shabbat Mama on Friday, so I'll be baking again, I think. Unless I wimp out with something purchased.)

An interesting lineage

I recently took a class at the Volkshochschule called "The Five Elements of Chinese Cooking". This was a mistake on my part, because what I thought I was taking was a Chinese cooking course. Instead, I was taking a cooking course that was based on the Chinese Five Elements of Fire, Water, Iron, Wood and Earth.

I enjoyed the course, in its slightly woo-woo, perhaps one also believes in homeopathy way, and I found the food that we actually cooked interesting because it was really German. In fact, I was able to use it as a discussion with my mother-in-law later.
Here above, however, you see a quite nice freshly made vegetable soup with Grießmehl Knödel. The recipe appeared very similar to that of matzoh balls, but they were as thick and heavy as cannonballs. I had always heard of matzoh balls tasting like cannonballs, but my mother's recipe (the Manischewitz recipe often made with soda water and then cooked in chicken soup) is light as air. Now I know whereof they speak and now I know whence matzoh balls derive. Truly these things barely increased in size when cooked, while matzoh balls more than double, but all the mass was as a ball of iron.

Zucchini Boats

I was wandering through my favorite expat blogs when I fell upon Heather of Heather in Europe's latest post: zucchini boats. Surprisingly, I had all the ingredients in the fridge (or mostly), including a big block of Irish Cheddar (I buy it by the kilo at Selgros). So I made them:
And they were really good. The kids didn't like them (what can I say- they are tough eaters), but the German scraped the pan.
Here's my version:

• Grab a few zucchini, cut off the ends, put in a greased pan with drizzles of olive oil at 180C for 10 minutes.
• Meanwhile, dice an onion and mince 3-4 cloves garlic and toss them in olive oil in a saucepan on the stove.
• Then dice a carrot and a celery stalk and add them in.
• Salt, pepper and thyme (can you believe it- all my spices and I have no sage! I wonder if it would have tasted better with that?).
• Remove the zucchini, use a grapefruit spoon to scrape them out, add the contents to pan, stir for a minute or two with some grated cheddar then put back into the hollow zucchini and return to the oven for 10 minutes.
• Remove from oven, add panko and a bit more salt, pepper and grated cheddar and cook for 10 more minutes.
• Remove and eat. Yum!
  

The Holiday whirl: More baking

Then it was T1's turn to be shabbat mama. We used my by now standard chocolate cake recipe and she requested blue frosting with pink sprinkles and pink with blue: "because the boys might not like pink".
When I grabbed the cake pan while picking up T2 (a friend gave T1 a ride to ceramics), there was 1 piece left and 2 girls split it— one boy said he'd had three pieces — so I think no one cared about frosting color:).

Julia and Julie

(Photo credit: (C) Michael P. McLaughlin)

I've had the movie DVRed for ages and I finally watched it and all I wanted was to see more of Julia Child's life. I read the book this is based on some years ago as an advance reader copy, and what I found most amusing was that the soul destroying agency for which Julie Powell worked was a sub-agency to the place that I was working at the time.
Reading Powell's book made me go out and buy and read several books by Julia Child (starting with My Life in France and moving forward into Kitchen Tips and Wisdom— I've got the videos and Mastering the Art 1 & 2 waiting in the US as I ordered them through WGBH for my next trip).
The movie is worth seeing for the Julia Child portions; it's unfortunate that Amy Adams wasn't able to make Julie Powell more interesting, but there wasn't a lot of there there for her.

What I've been doing for the last month: Spiced Applesauce Cake

I read a lot of food porn- although less than I used to. One of my favorite blogs is Smitten Kitchen.

On the 25th, Deb wrote about this spiced applesauce cake and, as it happened, I had not only all the ingredients sitting in my fridge, but also a relatively spanking new, happy anniversary Artisan stand mixer sitting on my counter. So, Dear Readers, I baked it.

And it was delicious. The first day I thought that I would have preferred more spices, but the second and third days the cake just got better and better as the spices and ingredients melded. It was too spicy for my children's German palates, but the German husband loved it.

Spiced Applesauce Cake with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting
Adapted, barely, from Gourmet.com by Deb,then adapted a bit more by me from Deb

For cake

2 cups (8 3/4 ounces or 250 grams) all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons (10 grams) baking powder
1/2 teaspoon (3 grams) baking soda
1/2 teaspoon (3 grams) salt
3/4 teaspoon (2 grams) cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon (1 gram) ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1 stick (4 ounces or 113 grams) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup (7 3/4 ounces or 218 grams) packed dark brown sugar
2 teaspoon (10 ml) pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups (about 13 ounces or 365 grams) unsweetened applesauce

For frosting
5 ounces (142 grams) cream cheese, softened
3 tablespoons (1 1/2 ounces or 42 grams) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup (4 ounces or 120 grams) confectioners sugar (I used less to taste)
1/2 (1 teaspoon) teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 175C/350°F with rack in middle. Thickly butter an 8- or 9-inch square cake pan.

Cake:

Measure flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices into one bowl.

Beat butter, brown sugar, and vanilla with an electric mixer at high speed until pale and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition, then beat in applesauce. At low speed, mix in flour mixture until just combined.

Spread batter evenly in pan and bake until golden-brown and a wooden pick inserted into center comes out clean, about 35 to 40 minutes.

Cool in pan 15 minutes. Run a knife around edge of cake to loosen, then invert onto a plate. Reinvert cake onto a rack to cool completely.

Cream Cheese frosting:

Beat frosting ingredients together and spread over top of cooled cake.

Tabbouleh

I've been looking for a good recipe for tabbouleh for ages. Friends have sent me several and I haven't been happy with any of them. At the end of my last German class we had the usual party and a classmate brought some tabbouleh with her and I remembered how much I missed it, so I thought I would start again.

This recipe worked very well and I expect that I will be making it again today.

• 1/2 c. fine or medium bulgur (next time I move this up to 1 c.)
  
• 1/3 c. evoo
• 1/4 c. lemon juice (I'll add a bit more- this was 1.5 lemons for me)
  
• 2 c. parsley leaves (only small stems)
• 1 c. chopped mint leaves (I left this out)
• 1/2 c. chopped scallion
• 4 medium tomatoes (seeded, cored, chopped- I only chopped them)

Soak the bulgur in hot water 1-30 minutes until tender. Then drain (I squeezed in a clean cloth) and toss with the oil and lemon juice, add salt and pepper.
Add all the other ingredients before serving and toss. Use fresh- more than a day is pushing it.

Based on Mark Bittman's recipe

Worms!

I had hoped to make a garbage cake, but the recipe I wanted to use needed Oreos, and the kids had eaten them all.

So then I tried for a grass with worms cake, but when I mixed the green and the blue frosting powder, it came out a bit more mucky. So I crumbled a bit of the chocolate cake over the frosting and added (halal- so no pig) gummi worms and went as a garbage-type of cake.

The kids love it. Although T1 wanted more frosting and T2 scraped the frosting off!

Pancakes

Mom's Pancake recipe (which I think may derive from an old Betty Crocker cookbook):
1 egg

1 C all purpose flour (I have always used Gold Medal)

3/4 C milk

2 T shortening, melted or veg. oil (I prefer either Crisco solid, whisked well in the bowl or softened butter)

1 T sugar

3 tsp baking powder(I use 2 with no problem)

1/2 tsp salt

Beat egg with hand beater until fluffy (I just use a fork); beat in remaining ingredients just until smooth. For thinner pancakes, beat in another 1/4 milk. (Let it rest until it bubbles- perhaps 5-10 minutes.)
To test griddle, sprinkle on a few drops of water. If bubbles skitter, heat is just right.

Using a 4 or more cup measuring cup with lip, pour about 3 T onto hot griddle.(I just pour some from a tablesppon- that makes silver dollar size).
Cook until puffed and dry around edges (look for the bubbles in the batter). Turn and cook until golden brown.(It's very quick.)

For blueberry pancakes: stir in 1/2 C of fresh blueberries, washed and patted dry.

Served with Vermont maple syrup (B grade to my preference) and the kids are wild for it (as is the German).

I've been making this recipe at least once a week since begging my mom to send it to me. Next up is asking what needs to be changed to use it in the waffle iron. As easy as pie (easier), and the kids are wild for it. Last week I used chocolate chips, but although the German loved that, the kids seem to be purists. Putting the recipe together takes less time than waiting for my frying pan to heat and for two kids under 8 and two adults a double recipe is better than a single- today I wound up having cottage cheese instead of pancakes when we ran out.

My favorite German product

Even though I went to University in the Fingerlakes, the closest I could get to Federweiser at home was to buy carboys of unpasteurised grape juice and let it ferment in my basement: nowhere as convenient and quickly tasty as this. Running a few weeks behind schedule, but hopefully will be available a little bit longer.

(The brown sugar is for chocolate chip cookies, brought back from the US. Anyone know where I can buy the real moist and molassesy stuff here?)

Unbelievably easy and moist Chocolate cake.

Recently this has been my go to cake.The original recipe is a little tetchy, but I don't go to that trouble (and my mixer is from heck, spraying me with ingredients when I don't hold a towel across the top of any bowl). I usually make a simple buttercream type frosting (shown below. The best tip I've had recently is that I can substitute some of the confectioner's sugar with flour, which gives me the volume of dry ingredients I need while cutting the sweetness which I have always found overpowering. I made this for the girls' birthday party and no one seemed to notice any difference in the frosting so I will continue to make this substitution going forward and be grateful. With thses changes, neither the cake nor the frosting are too sweet. If you prefer even less sweetness, sprinkle the top of the cake with confectioner's sugar, perhaps in a stencil, and hve a not too sweet, not too rich, easy to make in a few minutes chocolate cake: what could be better?

• 1 cup boiling water (really. Use your water cooker.)
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I used DP because I had it on hand and it was great)
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla (I used 3+)
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 sticks (1 cup/ 225 grams) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 1/4 (175 grams)cups packed dark brown sugar
• 3/4 (160 grams) cup granulated sugar
• 4 large eggs

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350°F (175C). Butter 3 (8- by 2-inch) round cake pans and line bottoms of each with rounds of wax or parchment paper. Butter paper and dust pans with flour, knocking out excess.I use a 13x9.

Whisk together boiling water and cocoa powder in a bowl until smooth, then whisk in milk and vanilla. Sift together flour, baking soda, and salt in another bowl.(I never sift.)

Beat together butter and sugars in a large bowl with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy , then add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in flour and cocoa mixtures alternately in batches, beginning and ending with flour mixture (batter may look curdled). (totally don't have the patience— I just start a bit,then add eggs to help bind, then start adding dry and liquid alternately and beat until it looks mixed.)

Pour in pan, put in oven. In mine at 175, takes between 25 and 30 minutes. Cupcakes (24) take 20-25 as well, when I tried them. Check early because this is a wonderfully moist cake. Bundt would take a little longer.
Simplified from the below recipe.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Devils-Food-Cake-with-Brown-Sugar-Buttercream-104574#ixzz1185YgXC8

Buttercream Frosting
Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine softened
• 3 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup confectioner's sugar
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1+ tablespoons milk

Makes: About about 1 1/2 cups of icing.
(Medium Consistency)

In large bowl, cream shortening and butter with electric mixer. Add vanilla. Gradually add sugar. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often. When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry. Add milk and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy. Keep bowl covered with a damp cloth until ready to use.

For best results, keep icing bowl in refrigerator when not in use. Refrigerated in an airtight container, this icing can be stored 2 weeks. Rewhip before using. Add more milk for liquid consistency.

altered from http://www.wilton.com/recipe/Buttercream-Icing

What I've been doing (instead of blogging): Decorating, Classes, Listening and Luxuriating

Decorating: 

• We put up two wall cabinets in the kitchen, with glass doors, from Bauhaus. So now I know that the rest of the kitchen isn't from Bauhaus, because their Buche laminat has better grain than our other cabinets.
  
• The German also put a face plate on the dishwasher, while cursing the entire time that the included template didn't work. Luckily, he has the heavy duty drill and the end result is great.
• Only 30 months later (in Germany) plus a few years, we framed the I❤NY posters I got from a co-worker who worked on the program and got them up on the walls. Beautiful. NY is such a fabulously diverse state. The framing was a journey of discovery, because framing is pretty expensive. We went looking for frames at Ikea, but their frames are expensive— even the ugly ones. And the size was way off: Standard German size is 100 x 70, but the posters were actually 91x61. When we went over to Bauhaus (they open earlier than the local frame-shop we were going to check out), we discovered that a custom frame would be in the 200€ range (with a mat being 40€+) and that even having it dry-mounted on styrofoam (styropur) would be 145€. However, Bauhaus had the strange size of 93x63. and the kind framing lady cut a piece of black stock to fit exactly: when we put it together, I'm not even certain the gap would have been visible, but it just went together perfectly. Each frame plus paper was under 28€. I'll e putting 1 more up and then a great Dragon (made of)  Origami poster.
• I unpacked all four remaining (in the apartment) boxes in an (ultimately unfruitful) search for my last remaining missing appliance — now the German will need to check the cellar but at least the apartment is cleared. After we get back from the Easter hols we will do the clothing changeover and the plastic boxes waiting for the switch-over will also be gone.

Classes:

• No, not German classes. When B.1.2 kicked back in the week after we moved, I just didn't want to live in a tip. I contacted the VHS and they agreed to roll my enrollment forward until June, the next time that Berliner Platz 3 will be the text used. I am reveling in my time.
• First was the sewing class. I have been wanting to learn to sew since before leaving the States. Hard to do when working and then with the baby and then packing up to come here. But a group I belong to had a member just start a series of one-offs and I saw it in time to sign up for the class this month. Fortuitously, it turned out to be sewing for kids and I made a pair of summer pants for T1 and sewed a matching embellishment on a T-shirt. It was fun! Amusingly enough, I found it far cheaper and better (because the instructions were in English) to order my new Brother sewing machine from the UK: even with expedited shipping it was only 2/3 the cost of buying it in Germany, and that with the bonus throw-in of a sewing kit and some extra feet.
• Then was the Crepes class. It was booked up but I sent an e-mail off to the organizer and she had so many folks interested she ran a second class. Now I know how easy crepes really are, I also know why my stir-frys were always "ehh"— heat not high enough— and I have a large baggy of crepes in the freeezer to pull out, thaw, and use for either savory or dessert.

Listening:

• I recently read The Echo in the Bone and at the end, I was so annoyed by the cliff-hanger ending I wasn't certain if the book (in English, purchased in Munich) had been printed properly or if there was a missing chapter. So I started wandering about the Internet and discovered that, strangely enough, Diana Gabaldon would be here, in Berlin next week. Quite short notice to find a babysitter. At first, it seemed that both of our regular sitters wouldn't be able to make it and a friend stepped up and said she would take the girls overnight. But I was concerned that they would not go to sleep early enough on a school night and that it would be a real problem. Luckily, one sitter was able to clear a schedule and I wound up having a very full day: first the crepes class, then grabbing the girls, making dinner, driving to Mitte, finding parking, enjoying the lecture (which I will write up in another post) and then getting back, which was an experience in itself.

Luxuriating:

• While running about yesterday (visiting the recycling center— close enough to the apartment that going there with large goods is easy— we stopped at our local McFit and the German fell in  love. An entire fitness center with only weight machines and cardio on the ground floor, with the 1st floor being nothing but free weights. So last night, while I took my first bath in the apartment (it's really deep! the water is really hot! the bathroom is really warm!— two radiators!) with a vanilla pillar candle burning and a Self magazine (is there a more frivolous read?), he went there, registered (in 2 minutes), and worked out for an hour.
• After which we called our parents and watched Brothers and Sisters. This is what life is supposed to be like.

Earlier in the day I made chicken soup  and an avocado cucumber salad (thanks Alice). So now I have stock for the coming month and chicken for chicken salad. 

I love my apartment. I love my kitchen. I love my full-size standing refrigerator and standing freezer.