Black Forest Cake is traditionally snow-white and decorated with a circle of cherries. Not my grandmother’s Black Forest Cake – hers was pink. She always made it that way, and I have never baked a Black Forest Cake using any other recipe. Whether my grandmother shared my aversion to candied cherries, or they were an expensive, unnecessary and probably hard-to-find ingredient in post-War Germany, I don’t know. As she did, I decorate my Black Forest Cake with only shavings of dark chocolate. For special occasions such as a birthday, I might reach for the pastry bag and decorate the cake with whipped cream rosettes. Continue reading
Tag Archives: german-americans
#AmericaCooksGerman: Share your photos of German summer foods and drinks
Strawberry Vodka Mixer (Erdbeerlimes). Recipe at the bottom of blog post.
If you have been to Germany in the summertime you might have grown fond of what makes a German summer wunderbar: having a beer and a Bavarian Brotzeit at a biergarten or, if you are from Frankfurt like me, a glass of apple wine mixed with seltzer water called Gespritzter; a German barbecue (Grillabend); or scrumptious fruit desserts such as the classic red fruit pudding Rote Grütze, or the iconic spaghetti ice cream that you can find in virtually every ice cream parlor in Germany. Continue reading
The grain of truth in German heirloom seeds
Leaving your home country to settle elsewhere brings along a loss of your cultural references, no matter whether the move to a new country was voluntary or involuntary. There are two cultural references that will always stick with you, and you don’t want to let them go because they are part of who you are: language and food. That’s why I don’t find it surprising when immigrants who otherwise happily adapt to life in the new country, maintain their culinary traditions, and continue to speak their native language. I do. Continue reading
Spoonfuls of Germany 