Berlin Eats: pastries galore
When I think of pastries, the first thing that comes to mind is "France." But during my time in Berlin, I realized that a lot of pastries that we consider to be "normal" in America, like streusels and strudels, are actually German.
The Sweet Stuff
The first pastry I had in Berlin was this square of strawberry cake. A lot of cakes are baked in a big sheet pan and cut into squares like this. This was so good. HUGE fresh strawberries held together by strawberry jello, on top of an ultra-moist crumb cake (seemed infused with pudding). I can't believe this big piece of cake was only €1.05 at Thoben's Backwaren, a chain in Berlin.
At the same store, at a later date, I tried their Nut Cream Cake. I wanted to try it because it sort of looked like a hazelnut cake which I always had for my birthday when I really little, living in New Jersey. Well, this tasted nothing at all like that hazelnut cake - the cream was too stiff and sweet, and not nutty enough. Wasn't bad though.
In the food hall of Galeria on Alexanderplatz, I tried the kasekuchen. It's "baked" cheesecake (as if most cheesecakes aren't baked). It has a sort of grainy, brittle texture which I quite like and prefer, and which is common in a lot of Japanese cheesecakes. That is, it's not silky smooth and supple like the Eli's Cheesecake which I eat all the time on United Airlines. This was pretty good and I finished it all too quickly.
Based on the recommendation of David Lebovitz's blog, I tried the bienenstich when I went to Rogacki restaurant in Charlottenburg. Bienenstich is bee-sting cake, which is a recipe I've come across a lot reading food magazines and cookbooks in America. I didn't like this piece so much, because I just though that the yeasted coffee cake dough underneath the almonds was a bit too thick.
The final sweet pastry I tried was the streuselschnecke. As soon as I saw the name, I knew I wanted to try it. Why? When I lived in Cincinnati, a lot of bakeries touted their schecken, which they baked during Easter. See, Cincinnati has a strong German heritage (hence names like Over-the-Rhine neighborhood), and they are quite proud of it.
Well, now that I've done a bit of research, I think that the Cincinnati schnecken are more similar to German schnecken than the one I tried. "Schnecke" mean "snail" in German, so not surprisingly they tend to look more like pull-apart cinnamon rolls, i.e. small and in a spiral. The one I ate was more like a big frisbee.
The Savory Stuff
Besides filled baguettes which are quite normal (except they often have massive amounts of butter in them), I did try a couple interesting savory pastries. One was massive cheese and onion filled pastry from Galeria. This was so big I ate it in two sittings. The cheese and onions (and small mustard seeds) had strong flavor, and the dough had qualities of both pretzel and pizza dough.
The other item I tried was based on the recommendation of David Lebovitz again. This was laugencroissant, which has a pretzel-like exterior with a croissant interior (and shape). It was just as I described it, and tasted fine (I'm not the biggest fan of either pretzels or croissants).
