Sunday, April 02, 2006
Cake for Breakfast
Friday's culinary delights consisted almost entirely of that greatest of German foods - cake. I had cake for breakfast, skipped lunch and, after a bit of pasta for dinner, finished the day with cake. I love cake, all cake, but German and Austrian cakes are particularly dear to me. I have been
told that the things you liked to eat during childhood will always be among your favourite foods. While I cannot confirm this general saying - packet mashed potatoes and tinned goulash have once and for all disappeared from my menu - it has certainly proven itself to be true in the case of cake. On special occasions my mum used to get great cakes from our local Konditor (the German equivalent to a patisserie) and I, who was rarely allowed to have sweets, could never get enough of them. When I was finally old enough to earn my own money, I used to go to a small coffee house in the city centre and sit in their huge armchairs for hours drinking hot chocolate, eating cheesecake, reading literature and feeling incredibly grown-up.The coffee house is long gone - just one of the many victims of the coffee bar invasion - and I have learned that a having read book does not make you an intellectual, but my passion for cakes remains. I love all kinds of cakes, the American sponge cakes with colourful icing that has never seen a natural ingredient in its life, the huge slices of cheesecake and carrot cake we used to get at Mug & Bean in Cape Town, the cute little pastries you get in Prague's delis and the wonderful home-made crumble at Dublin's Queen of Tarts. But I would leave them all untouched if you gave me the option to have a slice of such German/Austrian traditionals as Sachertorte (Viennese chocolate cake), Linzertorte (spiced blackcurrant and almond cake), Bienenstich (almond cake with honey cream) or Mohnkuchen (moist poppy seed cake).
The best place to get those in Munich these days is Café Schneller on Amalienstrasse, which, despite of the semi-French name and the recent makeover, is one of the few coffee houses left in town. Their great cakes - they have all the old favourites (baked on site) -, good coffee (even old-fashioned filter coffee is still available) and reasonable prices have attracted students from the university across the street for decades.
So why did I let my mum drag me to the Italian
Caffè Siena in the household goods store Kustermann? I suppose it was partly because she claimed that it was really good (in fact she called it "the best", but she tends to give this label to all her favourites), but mostly because she refuses to go anywhere that does not serve Latte Macchiato. Luckily, I did not regret it. I had a very nice cappuccino that would rival many a filter coffee and a slice of excellent ricotta torte (see image above) - coffee and cake, true breakfast of champions. My mum, after having given me a long speech about the advantages of
Italian and French food over the cuisines of Northern and Central Europe, opted for a Marillenstrudl, a traditional Austrian cake made of filo pastry and apricots. For some strange reason, when it comes to strudl (which comes with many different fillings, sweet and savoury, from apple to spinach) she always forgets that Austrian food is uncool. Could that have something to do with the fact that strudl is also a Czech specialty and therefore one of her pleasant childhood memories?Dinner, as I said, was more Italian food. I went to Mario's restaurant, an institution on Munich's Italian scene. This year the restaurant celebrates its god-knows-how-manieth anniversary, which, considering the price and quality of the food, is quite surprising. Not that their cooking is bad, but it ain't nothing special either. But the
prices are definitely out of the ordinary. €10 for a pizza or a pasta dish is decidedly too much in a family restaurant with very little atmosphere. Needless to say, dinner was nothing memorable: I had spaghetti with a lemon and prawn sauce that contained decidedly too much lemon and by far not enough prawns and my friend had a tasty but unspectacular filet of some white fish with a bit of melted butter and a handful of vegetables on the side. Desert was a bit more special. For the anniversary they had made a number of traditional Italian cakes and pastries that looked simply irresistible. I had a Camoli (or should it be Camolo?), a deep-fried Sicilian pastry roll filled with hazelnut cream. The colourful little sugar beads they were dipped in brought out the child in me. And as per usual with cake, I loved it.Christine at 10:55 pm
