Glutton Behavior (Germany)

I am both proud and ever so slightly appalled at myself.  In a span of four hours I ate breakfast at a relative’s house, went on a pastry crawl, drank a life-changing hot chocolate, and ate an entire ice scream sundae (almost).

I have no shame.

When faced with the departure from a country, I become overwhelmed with all the foods I absolutely must eat but have not eaten yet.  Take this instance for example.  With a mere 24 hours left in Germany, I simply refused to leave without eating kuchen, eis (ice cream), and generally stuffing myself with everything that looks delicious.  Hence, I grew an extra two stomachs.

It went something like this.  We awoke to a late breakfast of assorted breads, cheeses, cold cuts, and coffee.  After a round of goodbyes, we left my relative’s house and made our way to the city center to test the limits of our stomachs.

I began what I like to call a pastry crawl with a berry and custard filled, streusel topped roll.  It continued with a couple of bites of berliner bretzle (sweet pastry dough pretzel) filled with vanilla pudding.  Next was a slice of zuckerkuchen – basically sweet bread baked like a cake and topped with sugar and toasted almonds. And finally, half a nut filled, sugar glazed, chocolate dipped puff pastry roll.  I felt like the guy who has tons of money and just throws it all in the air and makes it rain.  Except I imagined myself doing so with german pastries.  Needless to say, I was incredibly content.  And astoundingly, I was prepared to eat more.

Ha, who am I kidding.  I wasn’t even astounded.  This was normal glutton behavior.

We continued to galavant about the city, seeking nourishment to satisfy the black hole that had appeared inside my stomach.  That black hole was quickly quenched with a large mug of hot chocolate.

this is what a life-changing cup of hot chocolate looks like

Now, listen up kids.  I’ve had a lot of hot chocolate throughout my 18 years of life.  Based on my extensive experience with hot chocolate, I like to thoroughly judge each hot chocolate I drink.  For example, swiss miss is dirty water.  The marshmallow variety seems to include some sort of white styrofoam pieces that were somehow mistakenly called marshmallows (if it wasn’t evident, I have a bit of a grudge against powders that are mistakenly marketed as “hot chocolate”).  Anyhow, this german hot chocolate – I’ll call it german for a lack of any other way to differentiate it from the other hot chocolate’s I’ve had – it was unlike any hot chocolate I’ve had before.  When I drink hot chocolate, I like to asses the drinkability.  For example, italian style hot chocolate has the drinkability of pudding.  Thus it’s easier to “drink” it with a spoon.  French hot chocolate is somewhere in the middle on the thickness scale.  It’s thick enough that a small sip will suffice, but not so thick that you begin to doubt your ability to finish off an entire cup.  Now, this german hot chocolate was on the opposite end of the scale, closer to the drinkability of chocolate milk.  And yet… it had this deceptive richness that I’d compare to that of french hot chocolate.  It’s as if there were tiny particles of chocolate suspended in what seemed to be regular hot chocolate made with steamed milk that melted on the tongue and created the allusion of extreme chocolaty-ness.  This was a very satisfactory cup of hot chocolate.  I could even call it life changing.

At that point I was slightly surprised that the immense amount of sugar I had eaten hadn’t knocked me out.  However, I decided to take advantage of the fact that I was still conscious and we continued our afternoon of gluttony with some ice cream.

Firstly I would like to make the general statement that all dairy products in Europe, and particularly Germany, taste better than those of their counterparts in America.  I have no desire to divulge in this topic but suffice it to say that some of the best ice cream I’ve ever had was in Germany.  I ordered some sort of sundae type object with vanilla ice cream, frozen yogurt, yogurt and a medley of fresh fruits in an attempt to bring some sort of balance to my diet (HA).  It came with some sort of magical berry coulis that gave me the impression that I was frolicking through a beautiful meadow perfumed with the sweet scent of happiness.  But the ice cream itself, the vanilla, was something entirely different.  It was some sort vanilla bean speckled, lovely lemony and ever so slightly fruity concoction that I would have very much liked to bathe in if it were possible.

And so, with an obscene amount of sugar coursing through my veins I was content to leave Germany having eaten nearly everything I had been set on consuming (except for that elusive/non-existent speatzle, which we wandered about for a good two hours looking for).  Thanks Germany, it was delicious.  Until next time.

Ciao!

Milk Chocolate and What? Ice Cream

Rum?  Kahlua?  Wine?  Baileys?  Cognac?  Every single type of alcoholic beverage you can image except beer was guessed when I asked my friends to identify what flavor of ice cream they were eagerly licking from their spoons.  Would you like to take a wild guess at what alcoholic beverage was in this ice cream?

In case you are still confounded, the secret ingredient is beer, Guiness Stout to be exact.  The delightful spiciness of the beer in this ice cream was complemented by the smooth, sweet taste of milk chocolate.  In other words, heaven for your taste-buds.  Especially if you like the taste of beer.  And the addition of an alcoholic beverage made the ice cream wondrously scoop-able, but also wondrously meltable – hence my imperfect, rapidly melting scoops. If you’re looking to confound your friends with a new, exciting ice cream flavor that will puzzle and delight their taste-buds, this is the perfect one.  Or should I say, “the perfect scoop” as David Lebovitz would call it.

*Clearly, my perfect scooping skills still require some practice.  The fact that it was also 90 degrees outside also didn’t help much.

Guinness-Milk Chocolate Ice Cream from the Perfect Scoop by Dave Lebovitz

Keep in mind that you’ll have to prepare an ice bath before hand for cooling off the completed ice cream mixture and it’s also a great idea to have all of your ingredients measure and ready before you start preparing the ice cream.

Ingredients

• 7 ounces (205 g) milk chocolate, finely chopped
• 1 cup (250 ml) whole milk
• 1/2 cup (100 g) sugar
• pinch of salt
• 4 large egg yolks
• 1 cup (250 ml) heavy cream
• 3/4 cup (180 ml) Guinness Stout
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. Put the chocolate pieces in a large bowl and set a mesh strainer over the top.
2. Warm the milk, sugar, and salt in a medium saucepan.  In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks.
3. SLowly pour the warm mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly, then scrape the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan.
4. Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat with a heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula.
5. Pour the custard through the strainer over the milk chocolate, then stir until the chocolate is melted.
6. Once the mixture is smooth, whisk in the cream, then the Guinness and vanilla.  Stir until cool over an ice bath.
7. Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Daring Bakers: Petit Fours

I am beginning to think that these daring bakers challenges are never going to go smoothly for me.  Which is completely fine with me.  After all, that’s why they call it a challenge, right?  And I love a challenge, as long as I get a reward.  And I most definitely did get rewarded this time, in the form of delicious little square of goodness composed of homemade vanilla ice cream sandwiched between two layers of brown butter cake and enrobed in a chocolate ganache.

Despite the first brown butter cake not completely cooking through in the center and then deciding to jump out of its pan and onto the floor, despite getting chocolate all over the counters, floor, and cabinets as I was desperately trying to coat the squares of cake and melting ice cream before they completely fell apart, I considered this a successful challenge.  My chocolate coating leaves a something to be desired, but taste-wise, you really can’t go wrong with chocolate.  Or brown brown butter cake or vanilla ice cream for that matter.  Thank you Elissa of 17 and baking, for yet another challenging but delightful challenge!  (you can check out her blog if you want the recipe)