A Georgia Girl in Germany

MacKenzie just finished taking her quarter-long Intercultural Education class, where they learned about German culture. Her final project for the class was to cook something German and bring it in to share with the class. Fortunately, I have a “German Baking” cookbook that she was able to peruse to find something relatively easy to make, and she settled on making the classic Eiserkuche (egg waffle) recipe...and it didn’t call for anything out of the ordinary.

She began by melting 5/8 cup of butter then letting it cool and solidify. She then sifted 2½ cups of all-purpose flour and set it aside. She mixed 2 to 3 drops of vanilla into 1 tablespoon of sugar and added it and another 2½ cups of sugar to the slightly set butter, then mixed it with the whisks until it became white and foamy. She then added 2 eggs, one at a time, whisking each for about 30 seconds on high before alternatively adding it and 2¼ cup of milk to the mixture.

The tricky part was making the waffles. We added the mixture to our greased waffle iron, but it didn’t want to cook through or come out easily. So we adjusted.

After a few attempts with the waffle iron, we cooked the rest of the batter in a pan and made crepe- looking pancakes. These cooked much better than they did on the waffle iron.

In keeping with the recipe, MacKenzie rolled each one around the handle of a wooden spoon. They turned out pretty well considering our minor adjustment. When she took them to school, her classmates enjoyed them and ate all but a few. The few that came back home didn’t last more than 24 hours.

Here’s our final version side-by-side with the book’s final version. The recipe book includes a tip of using a special waffle iron to make very thin waffles -- I think that’s what’s in this photo. They didn’t look the same, but they still tasted pretty good!

Labels: Cooking, Germany, MacKenzie