Cocoa Jelly Roll

Not only did I marry into a German family, but a German family of bakers. My MIL studied sales, with a focus in bakeries (Germans do things this way, you know), and worked in her family's bakery.

She met my FIL when he worked in their bakery to do his apprenticeship. Once a month on Saturday, he would cycle 40 kilometers from the baker in Fürth to his home for a visit. Then back to Fürth the next day.

After working a few years, it was determined that the flour dust was too dangerous for his lungs, so he switched to construction and spent the rest of his life doing tile and brickwork. Hard to imagine that as being less dusty, isn't it?

In any case, here's one of his favorite recipes: a jellyroll. The cocoa form uses cocoa for 1/3 of the flour requirement. Enjoy!

Bisquit Rolle (Jellyroll)
4 eggs
100 g sugar
1 pkg vanilla sugar
2 g sugar
75 g flour
50 g starch (cornstarch or potato starch)
pinch baking powder
250 g marmalade or confiture (strawberry, raspberry or apricot)
powdered sugar
whipped cream

Note: To make a cocoa roll, substitute cocoa for 1/3 of the flour.

Canned pineapple, chopped into small pieces
About a tablespoon Rum or cognac

Preheat oven to 220 degrees C.

1. Beat yolks with 3 tablespoons water until foamy.
2. Add 100 g sugar and vanilla sugar. Beat until creamy.
3. Mix whites with 25 g sugar until stiff. Fold into yolks.
4. Mix flour with baking powder and sift onto egg mixture.
5. Stir until just combined.
6. Spread into a rectangle onto a piece of parchment paper. Bake until done, can vary from 5 minutes until 15 minutes, depending on the thickness of the dough.
7. Remove from oven and turn immediately onto a clean kitchen towel sprinkled with sugar.
8. Roll up immediately, towel and all. You can freeze it at this stage (with the towel) or fill and serve. Sometimes it will crack.
   Disaster Recovery: If it breaks into too many pieces, cut it into small pieces and mix with the filling. Spoon into small mounds onto a cookie sheet, glaze with chocolate, and you now have “Granatsplitter.”
9. Prepare filling by whipping the cream and chopping the pineapple.
10. Unroll the cake.
11. Sprinkle with pineapple juice mixed with some rum or cognac.
12. Spread a layer of marmalade on the cake
13. Spread a layer of whipped cream on the cake.
14. Sprinkle pineapple on the whipped cream.
15. Roll up.
16. Cap the ends with whipped cream. Sprinkle powdered sugar on top, or pipe whipped cream over the cake. Sift some cocoa onto the whipped cream as decoration as desired.

Berger Zartbitter Chili

After an intense day at work, I felt the need to go to The Box for a special treat. I've certainly enjoyed all of these experiments at Lidl and Aldi, but occasionally one requires a truly refined chocolate to make a refined statement.

Today I chose Berger's Zartbitter Chili bar. When compared to the Caffarel chili, it's ever so slightly hotter, but not disturbing. Still quite pleasant. In terms of chocolatyness, it's a pleasant dark chocolate with not too much sugar and very smooth.

An Austrian company, I haven't found Berger chocolate anywhere except Germany or Austria. Austrian companies tend to be rather home-focused, and there aren't many who venture outside of Austria, much less beyond Germany. But Berger would certainly face problems, because their name is so similar to Scharffen Berger, a big name in chocolate worldwide. There's no connection as far as I've discovered.

Oh well, I'll just enjoy it while I can get it.

Reviewed: Berger Zartbitter Chili
Personality: Hot and a little mean
How to enjoy: A great bar to eat when you want a little kick. This would taste good with an iced drink, like say, a margarita.

Rating:
1: Better than sex
2: Little bites of heaven
3: Share with your best friend
4: Will do in a pinch
5: Halloween candy

Where to buy:
Germany: Salon du Cacao

Aldi Choceur Milk Mice

Germans are brilliant! Not only do they make some of the worlds best chocolate, they've managed to redefine chocolate into a health food for kids.

Just like the clever move of defining beer as food, Germans have created Kinderschokolade, which contains not only good chocolate, but also a significant portion of milk. OK, maybe significant means "just large enough to call it Kinderschokolade" but still it's an idea that works.

Then they take this Kinderschokolade and package it in eye-grabbing white and blue wrappers. So you can eat these tasty treats, and trust that you're doing something good for yourself at the same time.
These are cute, too. Check out those little eyes and the adorable smile.

Rating:
1: Better than sex
2: Little bites of heaven
3: Share with your best friend, they'll love you for it
4: Will do in a pinch
5: Halloween candy

Where to buy:
Germany and everywhere: Aldi

Moser-Roth Milk Macadamia

I've often wondered if chocolate could be made to taste like butter. Nougat chocolate comes very close, and so does ganache.

Well, Moser-Roth has come up with a new way to mimic the flavor. They've taken a nice, smooth milk chocolate, and added bits of macadamia. These bits are properly toasted, and have a nice rich macadamia flavor. Add to that the milk chocolate, and the combination is smooth, buttery, and very satisfying.

Storck, the Werther's and Toffifee company, doesn't exactly say this on the first page of its product information, but they manufacture this brand for Aldi. Moser-Roth was once its own company right here in Stuttgart, but was shut down for political reasons in 1942, and even though it reopened after the war, closed again in the '60's. Now it's just a brand name, with no discernable connection to the original company.

Reviewed: Moser-Roth Milk Macadamia
Personality: a smooth chap, with a taste of Hawaii
How to enjoy: good budget chocolate to be eaten any time

Rating:
1: Better than sex
2: Little bites of heaven
3: Share with your best friend
4: Will do in a pinch
5: Halloween candy

Where to buy:
worldwide at any Aldi store

Pralines de Maitre Paul Kir Royal

Ever tasted chocolate from the former East Germany? I just did. "East Products" are in at the moment. People are getting old enough to remember their childhoods more fondly than they really existed, thereby making them think things tasted better than they actually did.

Right after the East German border opened for day visits, I remember my mother-in-law telling us a story of the missing farmer. There was a farmer in East Germany who disappeared from his farm one day. They looked for him everywhere, but when night came, he did not show up.Very late in the night, he arrived home. His family gathered around him, happy that he'd returned, but wondering what had happened.

He had spent all day and most of the night crossing the border. Over in the West for just a couple of hours, it hardly seemed like it was worth the trouble. "I'd never had a banana," he said, "so I went to get some."

That was all. 13 hours, sitting in traffic, to buy some bananas.

Halloren Chocolate Factory is a company in the former East. In business for over 200 years, they made chocolates even during the time 1950 - 1990 when the company was confiscated by the government.

The company's website is worth looking at, and has some of the history of the company. Check out the chocolate room in the museum. http://www.halloren.de/

However, Pralines de Maitre Paul are luxury pralines without the luxury taste. The version I bought is called Kir Royal, but the flavor is too weak to identify either the champagne or the cassis berries. It nicely put together, and you can see the cassis and marzipan sections. We should be able to taste champagne, cassis, pistachios, almonds and chocolate, but it's mostly just sweet. Too bad - it coulda been great.

Reviewed: Pralines de Maitre Paul Kir Royal
Personality: Dull wanna-be
How to enjoy: don't bother

Rating:
1: Better than sex
2: Little bites of heaven
3: Share with your best friend
4: Will do in a pinch
5: Halloween candy

Nestle Snack bars

Nestle Snack bars are new products on the German market. Large waffles covered with a little bit of chocolate, it looks like you get a big bar compared to your average candy bar.

What's important to me is the taste. Both are good, but leave a little to be desired.

The dark chocolate version could use a little more coating thickness, yet the flavor of the chocolate is rich and you know you've eaten a little dark chocolate rather than just a waxy brown coating.

The coconut version really needs more coconut flavor. It left me wishing that I could go back to Atlanta, Georgia, find that antique show again, and eat that heavenly coconut cake that I once had years ago. But the white chocolate coating was delicious and enough to make this a treat anyway.

Reviewed: Nestle Snack
Personality: Light and Airy
How to enjoy: Like they said in their press release, it makes a great light dessert after lunch. That's exactly how we ate it.

Rating:
1: Better than sex
2: Little bites of heaven
3: Share with your best friend. I did! DH and I each ate one.
4: Will do in a pinch
5: Halloween candy

Where to buy:
So far, only in Germany at the stores and snack shops.

Ritter Sport Loacker Napolitaner

Keebler elves are insidious beasties, always enticing me to eat more and more of their delicious fudge-covered wafers known as Fudge Sticks. Since coming to Europe, though, I've found similar cookies, except that they've been covered in chocolate instead of fudge.

Loacker is one of those cookie companies.Now Loacker has joined forces with Ritter Sport to go one step further. They've merged the Ritter milk chocolate with Loacker Napolitaner wafer cookies, but instead of just a coating of fudge, there's an thick layer of actual chocolate on top of the chocolate covered wafers. Now that's a good balance of chocolate and cookie!

Reviewed: Ritter Sport Loacker Napolitaner
Personality: nothing elfin about this
How to enjoy: Try this when you want to eat both chocolate and a cookie. It's a big burst of both. Keep the portion small, though, they're rather dense.

Rating:
1: Better than sex
2: Little bites of heaven
3: Share with your best friend
4: Will do in a pinch
5: Halloween candy