Easter Bunnies

In Germany, the secular side of Easter revolves around rabbits and eggs. I'm still a little unclear on the whole rabbits hatching from eggs part of Easter, but that's not something unique to Germany.

The chocolate bunnies here come in every shape and size and flavor, from white to dark chocolate, and from chocolate for kids with extra calcium to chocolate for adults with liqueur.

 

By far the most well-known are Lindt's Gold Hase, which have been made for more than 50 years. According to Lindt's site, 

One fine spring morning in March when the ground was still covered with a white blanket of snow, a master chocolatier from LINDT observed little rabbit in his garden.  His little son was completely fascinated when he saw the hare, but began to cry when the rabbit disappeared into the bushes.
Struck by the his son's sadness, the father suddenly had a great idea:

"I should make a rabbit like that of chocolate ..."

He made a rabbit out of finest Lindt milk chocolate, wrapped it in gold paper and hung him a golden bell on a red ribbon around his neck so he would not be lost.

"When the bell rings, you can find it easily," the choclatier said to his young son. And so the first GOLDHASE had come into this world.

However the tradition began, the Goldhasen are now one of the best known international Easter sweets.  They emerge from eggs and come in sizes from baby up to 1 kg giants.

 

This year, Lindt introduced the dark chocolate (brown ribbon) and white chocolate (white ribbon) varieties to go with the traditional red-ribboned milk chocolate Goldhase.

Though chocolate is the main event, everyone else gets in on Easter bunny mania, too....we find rabbit shaped cookies and breads and rabbit-shaped versions of most candy bars.

Chocolate-dipped shortbread sandwich and rabbit bread

And it wouldn't be Easter in Germany without an elaborately creative themed educational display. In PEP (the closest thing in Munich to an American-style mall), they have displays throughout the mall using the fictional Rabbit Co. ("Hasen AG") to teach children how chocolate is made - from harvest to chocolate egg.

 Growing and Harvesting the cacao Beans 

Drying and Fermenting 

Shipping the beans

  Pulverizing and Processing the Beans                                     

Making Chocolate and Molding Chocolate Eggs

Painting, Wrapping, and Shipping Chocolate Eggs

The detail in these displays was amazing, down to planting flowers and aging the printing on the cacao bean bags. Of course there were signs at each display explaining the steps of the chocolate making process. And at the end, a cage full of adorable real rabbits to see. Unfortunately not a petting zoo, but still adorable!

German Easter Candy and Eggs

After months of chocolate and candy displays, the long-awaited day is here!

How do you celebrate Easter in Germany?

It varies, by family, by region, and of course by religious beliefs. The schools are on a 2 week break, so much of the country goes on vacation.  Italy and the New York/Florida combo are the most popular destinations, as are ski trips in years where Easter is earlier.  Easter here is second only to Christmas as a holiday - it's a pretty big deal.  In the Munich area, for those who don't go on holiday, a traditional fish lunch on Good Friday is common, as is church on Sunday, followed by a family dinner.  The church bells have been ringing frequently for the past 24 hours.  Or, these days many of the younger people who didn't travel for holiday or to see family will go out to the English Garden and enjoy sun, friends, and nature when the weather is nice.  And somehow, it's always nice on Easter.

But across Germany, the common traditions are similar to the US. Easter trees are big, as are displays of flowers and new life. Rabbits and eggs come in every form, spring cleaning is a popular "sport," and on Easter morning many families hide chocolate eggs and treats for the kids to find.  There are some older, more localized traditions such as the Easter bonfire and Saturday Easter Market, but we're talking city life in this blog today. And more importantly, we're talking sweets!

I had the chance to pop into a CVS in the US and check out the candy assortment. How do German and US Easter baskets differ?

American Easter Basket:      

Contents:
Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Bunny
Peeps
SweetTart Chicks, Ducks & Bunnies
Cadbury Creme Eggs and Caramel Eggs
Whopper's Robin Eggs
Cadbury Mini Eggs
Reese's Eggs
Milk Chocolate Bunny
Jelly beans (not shown)

German Easter Basket(s):

Contents:
Chocolate eggs, with a variety of fillings (marzipan, liquers, hazelnut, nougat, crispy butterfinger type things, etc)
Marzipan Loaf
Ferrero Eggs
Lindt's famous Gold Hase chocolate rabbits
Lindt chocolates in a variety of shapes...frogs, turtles, lambs, chicks, carrots
Chocolate-covered almonds
A real eggshell filled with nougat
Spring chocolate bars from Lindt
fondant fried eggs
Egg tree ornaments with chocolate eggs inside 

Lindt varies their chocolates by season. We see in Christmas chocolates featuring spices and a more warm mix. In Spring, they feature fruits, yogurt, and ice-cream type fillings - generally much lighter and fruiter than the heavy spiced chocolates of winter. These giant  Lindt truffles have a creamy stracciatella filling, similar to the bars that have a creamy filling. The bars are not true ice cream, but are recommended to be served cold and are like a cool bit of cream and fruit wrapped in tasty Lindt chocolate. Lindt has whole sections devoted to Easter and Spring chocolates, with lots of pastel and fruits. The Easter choclates will disappear now, but the Spring varieties will go on through the summer.

Lindt's Spring assortment

  Lindt Easter bars(btw, I adore the Lindt chocolate lambs in the first basket, as they have one black sheep in the flock.)

What's the difference between German and American Easter candy?

The main differences I see is are:

1) American Easter candies are more based on pure sugar, whereas the Germans focus on chocolate (especially high quality chocolate), cute animal packaging, and lighter tasting (not lighter in caloric terms!) flavors such as fruit.

2) The American candies are mainly Easter shaped version of the same candy, but the German ones often vary the ingredients for Easter, as well as using different fillings and chocolate blends than they do year round.

In Germany, chocolate is the most popular Easter sweet by far, then bunnies and eggs the most popular shape of sweets. The sheer volume of chocolate rabbits in Germany is something we'll tackle separately in the next post....

Eggs:

Easter eggs come in all varieties....sets to dye your eggs (with natural dyes, of course) are widely available, as are real eggs from an assortment of fowl - Ostrich, goose, chicken, quail. They come dyed, raw, already hollowed out, etc.

colored quail eggs

Most stores will have a wide assortment of chocolate eggs....with various nut fillings, nougat, fruits, and liqueurs. However, marzipan eggs are an Easter specialty. Niederegger, the famous Lübeck based marzipan maker, offers all types of different marzipan eggs, as well as some nougat ones. They're good, but marzipan is a bit too sweet to eat in large quantities! Most of the marzipan eggs will be in different fruit flavors and dipped in chocolate. Dark chocolate dipped marzpian is a pretty tasty combon, but again...in small doses!

We were amused to find that Milka makes something looking suspiciously similar to Cadbury Creme Eggs, so of course we here at Schnitzelbahn investigated closely.

The Milka Löffel Ei ("Spoon Egg") comes in a 4-pack carton, with two spoons. It's an egg you crack open to eat the creamy sweet filling. Sounds a lot like a Cadbury Creme Egg, with a little ettitquette and fancy packaging.

Upon first examination, they look similar. The Cadbury egg is slightly smaller, vs the Milka egg's life-sized egg size. And the Milka directions show a little indentation where you bang the spoon to crack the egg open into a nice, clean shape to pull off the top.

The real difference is in the taste.  On the chocolate side, I think the Cadbury chocolate is a bit better tasting, but both are good. Cadbury just does milk chocolate really well! Milka does, too. But really here the chocolate is unimportant - it's about the filling.  Or we'd be eating Cadbury Mini-Eggs, a Milka bar, or some Lindt.

The filling is where we see the real difference. Cadbury eggs often get stale a bit quicker - the taste is still the same, but the filling gets a little drier and not so creamy. No matter, it still is vastly different from the Milka egg. Basically, the Cadbury egg is filled with sugar or fondant. It tastes extremely sweet, and you'll love it or hate it.

The Milka egg, on the other hand, is basically filled with buttercream frosting. Yum!! I know they say it's filled with fondant, but it taste like a sweet spoonful when you're scraping the bowl after making buttercream frosting. It's really good, and it's a much less sweet, sugary taste.

It of course doesn't have the cult following that the Creme Eggs have, nor does it inspire scientistific experiments, but it's a really tasty treat and it's much more manageable than making a batch of frosting or buying a can!

So, a Frohe Ostern to all, and hope you're all enjoying your Easter treats and holidays. Let us know if the Easter Bunny brought you anything special this year. He hid some great DVDs (American TV and BBC's Planet Earth blu-ray) around my apartment.

American Beef + German Beer

What better combo??

In general, American beef is EXTREMELY expensive in Germany (unless you have access to a military base). It's also not found everywhere. However, German beef is usually quite good for roasts, ground beef, and other uses, and Uruguayan and Argentine steaks are quite good.

But when I saw ribeyes at the store for insanely low prices, I had to give them a try. They were the perfect way to christen the grill Herr J had put on my balcony while I was away (he knows the way to a southern girl's heart!).  Yes, the label really does say my beef was "Born in the USA". In Germany, when you can get 3/4 of a pound of American ribeye for less than the price of a maß of beer, it's celebration time!

Herr J put a nice cajun rub on these big boys and then set them out to grill:

You'll have to ask him what was in there, but it was really tasty.

We made a nice salad (heavy on the pine nuts and parmesan, of course), and had a good German pilsener - this time a Bölkstoff. What a great dinner to end a week of hard work!

Vienna - Schoenbrunn and schoenes Essen

Not long ago, Frau A and I took a weekend trip to Vienna.  This time, instead of driving (like to Stuttgart), we decided to take the train.  The ride itself is about 4 hours and 20 minutes.  At this distance, the door-to-door time is just about equal with flying (but still a little cheaper, when you factor in the ride to the airport).  We could have driven in slightly less time, but the train was more relaxing and no traffic jams.

We all learned about the Austro-Hungarian Empire in school, but still it is easy to forget just how close Vienna is to Hungary and the Czech Republic (probably because you think of Austira as part of the modern German language block.  In fact, there is a boat that travels along the Danube to Bratislava, Slovakia in just over an hour.  (next time...)

One of the most popular tourist destinations in Vienna is Schoenbrunn Palace and Gardens.  It was very cold that day in February, so we spent an abbreviated time snapping photos of the palace and grounds.  In comparison with sites in Munich like the Nymphenburg Palace, Schoenbrunn has a much more regal and powerful feel -- it was the home of the Habsburgs and center of power in its time.

Here I caught Frau A taking photos of the front gate.  It was a blustery day, so I used the Olympus "dramatic tone" filter to increase contrast and give the picture more punch.

We took a short tour of the palace (of course, a very vary small part -- it's enormous... wonder what the other thousands of square meters are used for?).  For a moment, the sun was hitting the back of the palace nicely, and the colors came out beautifully.  That's Frau A again on the right, snapping her own pics.  Again, perhaps not as ornate as other palaces, but has a really large presense.  Impressive.

You see the balcony in the above photo?  This is the back of the palace, facing the gardens.  From here, you get a nice view of the grounds -- massive scene.  This was the end of winter, so things were a bit gray and muted, but you might imagine what it could be in the spring a summer.  I also particularly like the structure on the hill at the far end.  It looks like a mystical site in a fantasy movie.

  

Again, since it was mostly an overcast day (except the few minutes for the photo of the back of the palace above, where skies magically cleared) I took the opportunity to use the "dramatic tone" art filter again and caught sun streaming through the clouds.  Nice otherworldly effect.

After hours on your feet walking around the palace and gardens, you need some good food (schoenes essen) and we definitely found that.  No, we did not go the Hotel Sacher and get the famous sachertorte.  However we did have Wiener Schnitzel and Zwiebelrostbraten at the "12 Apostles Cellar".  The building has been around since 1339 and it's known for traditional Austrian cuisine.  We also had the local "double malt" beer to go with the dishes.  As expected, it was a bit sweeter than a typical Munich helles, but the malt was roasted more darkly and it had a nice, complex flavor.

Later in the weekend, we enjoyed some goulash -- no, not the soup but yes, this is a Hungarian dish leftover from the empire.  It's hung around because it's good.  The meat is falling-apart tender, and the paprika-rich sauce is fantastic.  And we washed it down with more local beer.  Notice that these glasses are different than the Munich maß. They're more squat - shorter and wider - but still give you a half-liter.  The most common Viennese beer is the märzen, like the beer server at Oktoberfest.  A little darker and sweeter than the standard Munich helles.  Excellent.

        

Yes, those are two shots of local schnapps in front of the beer.  Cultural research, you know.

Despite skipping the sachertorte, we did indulge in two other Vienna classics:  apfelstrudel and chocolate truffel torte.  Sooooo good.  There are so many nice cafes in Vienna, and they all have a selection of sweets like these.

         

We have more photos, and more thoughts to post about Vienna... but we really can't wait to return.  A great weekend getaway from home base in Munich.

What Happens When You Give Free Toppings in Germany?

To many American tourists, Germany is the land of no ice, where water costs more than beer. And you have to pay for ketchup at fast food places.

Yes, it sounds odd as an isolated fact. But it's part of the system...Because drinks are so costly, they are also measured exactly. In most restaurants, your glass will have a line with the measurement. Under the German system, customers want to be sure that they get their money's worth - a full 0.33 mL or 0.5mL drink. Adding ice distorts the measurements, thus is not used. Why the clever German engineers haven't come up with standard ice cubes to allow for standard volume of water displacement is another question...I'm sure they could do it, but then again, many Europeans don't like ice in their drinks!

The water thing...yeah, I still am not sure why you don't get free tap water, but most people drink sparkling mineral water or want extra minerals in their water. (sparkling water is wasser mit kohlensäure - or just wasser mit. If you want plain, ask for stilles wasser or ohne kohlensäure).

Along this logic, chicken nuggets usually come with one sauce included - you pay for an extra if you want more sauce than someone has deemed normal. With fries, sometimes 1 ketchup pack is included in the price; sometimes not. In an Italian or upscale restaurant, usually the basket of bread slices is included with your meal (don't ask for a second one!); however, in most German restaurants, you will be charged for the number of pretzels or rolls you consume out of the basket on the table. (Because of this system, it would be a faux pas to take half a pretzel and leave it in the basket!)

So, it is a little unusual to drink tap water, and the German system of self-responsibility also extends to paying for what you use.

This system works pretty well here, once you know the rules. And perhaps it keeps costs from rising further, who knows? But the amusing part of it is what happens when there's an exception to the rules. As we've seen from New Years Eve fireworks, the World Cup, and other events allowing organized chaos,  when you suspend the rules, Germans will take it to the extreme.

This week Herr J stopped at Subway in the train station on his way to a meeting in Nürnberg (the smell of baking bread is intoxicating!!!), and ordered a sandwich. He asked for just a little bit of lettuce on his sandwich and maybe one other topping. Here's the exchange that followed with the Subway employee:

Subway Guy:  Don't you want more toppings?
Herr J:            No, that's OK. This is all I want
SG:                 But they're included.
Herr J:            I know, but the grilled chicken is really good and I want to enjoy its taste instead of all the toppings
SG:                 [laughs] Yeah, we Germans will pile on as many toppings as will fit because they're free.
Herr J:            And how does the sandwich taste?
SG:                 Not so good actually, it just tastes like lettuce.

For the record, Subway also has self-serve fountain drinks, with ice. AND FREE REFILLS! In additional to having international franchising standards and American customers, I think the theory is that ice is allowed in self-service situations because the customer is taking on the choice and responsibility of serving himself/herself a less than full serving.

Herr J had a similar experience in the US, when he took visiting German colleagues to Fuddruckers, home of free burger topping bar that encourages you to "Pile it high" and "Never leave hungry."

His colleagues learned the true American-style meaning of "my eyes were bigger than my stomach!" However, they really loved the place - partly due to good burgers, and especially due to all the free toppings and choice.

The Good Side of German Customer Service

As previously mentioned, customer service in Germany sometimes can surprise you...on the postive side, a service person's incredible knowledge in his or her area of expertise is shocking. And you will often come across people in stores who take great pride in their department.

Herr J's neighborhood grocery store is a great example of this. The man who runs the wine section spent 7 years in New Zealand, and therefore is always on the lookout for good NZ wines to include in the store's selection. The wine section of the store is "his" section, and he takes great pride in it. He holds wine tastings in the store every few months and likes to interact with customers to find out what they enjoy and how he can improve the selection.

One of the butchers there has a similar approach. In addition to the normal meat selection, they offer a variety of pre-marinated or pre-assembled meat dishes (think kebabs, roulade, etc.). We've found the marinades to be exceptionally good, and he explained to Herr J that he enjoys experimenting and making new creations to sell to customers.

His thinly sliced bacon-wrapped pork spirals on a stick were pretty amazing, so when we saw this unusual looking thing in the meat counter, we had to try it:

It looked like raw hamburger braided with strips of puff pastry, so I expected it would taste similar to the beer and beef pies I usually have on hand in the fridge...just in a different shape.

We still don't know what these are called, but we're going to experiment with making them. The taste was wonderful - the ground beef (a very lean beef, as is typical here) was mixed with onion, garlic, and spices, sandwiched between strips of puff pastry, then braided. You cook around 150°C for 15-25 minutes, and then we turned it up a little at the end.

The results were so great! We're looking forward to seeing what else the butcher creates.  

Time for Easter Eggs

It's possible that Germany outdoes the US in the holiday candy area - Easter candy seems to come out on February 15th. Though I can't really complain...the holiday chocolate here is top quality!

Similar to the Christmas ones, Kinder has giant Kinder Surprise Eggs for Easter.

Inside the milky, chocolatey shell, we find a cute little chick. He's supposed to hold your pen, but he also will hug the neck of a wine bottle...we found a similar stuffed penguin in the Christmas giant eggs.