18 December 2007

Seasoned Eatings - Brown Cakes

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Though I'm new to reading their blogs, Thyme For Cooking and Country Girl City Living were kind and let me join Seasoned Eatings, a Secret Santa-esque inter-continental spice exchange. You send a spice unique to where you live (or unique to you cooking style), along with a recipe, and you receive a package with a new spice.

I got in the mail spices and flours from Ulrike in Germany. The recipe included is for Brown Cakes, or Braune Kuchen. Ulrike sent me cinnamon

ground cinnamon

cloves and pottash (which I've never worked with before)

pottasche

and two bags of flour (rye and cake flour). Making something new was exciting but also left me feeling very unsure of what I was doing. Not knowing how things should look and feel at certain stages made me uncertain that things were going well. The moment I was least sure of what I was doing was when I mixed the butter, brown sugar, and molasses - "Is it supposed to look like that?" I even had to call Jason over to get his input but he had no idea (only adding "photoshop could never save this picture"). But the cookies came out well (I think!) and it was fun to roll them out. They smell wonderful in the oven and though I'm not sure of proper brown cake etiquette, I think they'd be wonderful with a glass of milk, or maybe coffee.

Thank you to Ulrike for sending me this wonderful package and to Lindsay & Katie for organizing this.

You can view the recipe for Brown Cakes at Küchenlatein.

4 comments:

ostwestwind said...

Great job, they look as they should look!

The "Braune Kuchen" etiquette says that you dip it into your milk or coffee or you eat it on a buttered German black bread :-).

Katie Zeller said...

They look yummy! I would have been stumped with the potash. How fun to get the whole package.
Isn't it great when you ask an opinion and get the smart remark, instead. I bet he's eating his words ;-)

Chris said...

Looks great! These are new for me. This was a wonderful event to complete.

Laurie Constantino said...

Those look so interesting, and I love the sound of the recipe -- I bet the rye flour adds a lot of flavor. How does the "type 405" flour compare with American flour?? You did a great job with these cookies!