Oktoberfest

One of the things I love about blogging is that it gives you a community of people from whom to seek advice on almost any question or problem you may have. It's like having your own personal Wikipedia.

Thus it was that when I was invited to an Oktoberfest, and asked to bring along a German dessert, I knew exactly what to do. My go-to person on German affairs (though I've never actually had any call to consult her before) is Metropolitan Mum, who writes a blog in impeccable English. I didn't know she was German for ages. Anyway, I emailed Met Mum and asked her for an idea for a very simple German dessert (Husband away this last week, and I knew I'd have no time or energy for trying out some fancy concoction). She emailed back, and suggested I give Bayerische Creme a go (that's Bavarian Cream to you and me), and sent me a link to a recipe on a website. This one, if you're interested. It didn't look too hard, and Met Mum had also sent me a link to a recipe for raspberry sauce which looked achievable, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

The recipe involves making a creamy, eggy, sugary, milky mixture, adding gelatin to it, and then leaving it to cool. Before it sets, you fold in a comfortingly large amount of whipped cream (anything with whipped cream is going to be a success, right?) The recipe says something like "remove the milk/egg mixture from the heat and allow to cool until it begins to thicken". It doesn't say (and it surely should) "don't go off at this point and do something else like checking your emails, or putting away the laundry, or reading the newspaper, because you will probably forget the mixture for too long, and when you open the fridge, you will find it completely set and it will be TOO LATE to do anything about it". What kind of recipe leaves out a detail like that? I tried combining the stuff with the whipped cream (I use the word 'combining' because we were way past the possibility of 'folding in gently' as the recipe wanted), but the result was a clumpy lumpy mound of something that looked really very horrid (though still tasted quite nice - if you ignored the texture, and maybe there are people out there who like small gelatinous lumps in their smooth food).

So, Met Mum, Vorsprung Durch Technik and all that, I thought I'd better improvise. I spooned the lumpy mound into my blender, added a good amount of chocolate milk, and whisked the living daylights out of the stuff. It became light, fluffy, delicate, fragrant... so I quickly poured it into some white ramekins, because we all know that anything in a white ramekin looks good (I sometimes sit in one myself, just to feel better about life), and popped the re-christened Bavarian Chocolate Cream back into the fridge. Even having been whisked beyond death with the chocolate milk, it set nicely.


I'd rather lost heart by this stage, so I didn't try the raspberry sauce, but you can see that I kept the berry theme by decorating each one with a delicate slice of strawberry. You have to realise that these were going to be transported to the other side of town on the laps of assorted children, and I didn't think a flourish of whipped cream, or a dusting of cocoa powder, or a curl of dark chocolate tucked inside a sprig of fresh mint would make it.

When I ran out of ramekins, I used sherry glasses. Sophisticated is my middle name.


So thanks for your help on this one, Met Mum. Not only for the recipe, but also for your suggestion that I should wear a dirndl skirt (sadly, I didn't have one) and impress my friends by learning and performing this song.

Which I totally would have done, except I didn't want to overwhelm them with my multifarious talents, what with the Bavarian Chocolate Cream being such an unmatchable demonstration of my creative prowess.

One thing leads to another, and this whole venture made me realise that taking photographs of culinary delights is really tricky. It's a whole art. I mean, you can probably tell that my pictures just don't do justice to the triumph that was the Bavarian Chocolate Cream. Luckily, should I ever want to improve in that area (can't quite see a future in which I'll be photographing a lot of my cooking, but you never know), I can think of the ideal go-to blogging friend on that too. The blogging community isn't just a personal Wikipedia, come to think of it. It's an opportunity for a masterclass on pretty much any subject you like.

(And by the way, Met Mum, I don't speak German, so I hope that song isn't full of rudeness and obscenities. This is a family-friendly blog.)