Spoonfuls of Germany


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How #AmericaCooksGerman

Photo credits (clockwise): @nikkioutwest, Kristl Walek, Dan Schneider, Eleanor Oliver, Sandra Atanackovic; (center): @michellecialone, Sandra Atanackovic, @kurtrosetree.

There’s no beating around the bush – German cuisine is neither hip nor cool. The Washington Post, in a March 2018 article entitled “Grandma’s food’: How changing tastes are killing German restaurants”, explained well why German restaurants in America, some of them over 100 years old, are closing all across the country. Their clientele is simply disappearing, and the grandchildren of their loyal customers, while they might visit Berlin, viewed as the most exciting city in Europe, they don’t return with a craving for German food that makes them seek out the German restaurant in town. Nor do millennials hurry to the kitchen to cook something German. Continue reading

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German-American gingerbread magic

German food, I wrote in the introduction to my German cookbook 15 years ago and keep repeating, is the Cinderella of world cuisines – overshadowed by her pretty sisters, looked down upon and underrated. But come along Christmas season, it’s payback time. Even people who usually turn up their nose at German food are charmed by German Christmas traditions. “German” Christmas markets spring up everywhere in the United States, and I have not seen anyone who does not delight in a plate of Christmas stollen, lebkuchen and other German Christmas goodies.

For The Year of German-American Friendship, I want to introduce you to Ryan Berley of Shane Confectionery, and Sandy Lee of Leckerlee, two American entrepreneurs who are following in the footsteps of German gingerbread tradition, each in their own, special way. What comes out of their ovens in New York City and Philadelphia is unlike the other, but each equally top-notch and delicious. Continue reading


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The truth about Hänsel and Gretel

Gingerbread house

We had several inches of snow at Thanksgiving. Our house with its lit windows created a winter wonderland look – like the gingerbread house in Hänsel and Gretel. It put me in the mood to make a gingerbread house.

As I looked through recipes and assembled ingredients and patterns, it hit me that I do not know much about the origin of the gingerbread house tradition. I vaguely recalled a witch’s gingerbread house as the crime scene in Hänsel and Gretel, a fairytale by the Grimm Brothers. Continue reading