Today I wanted to introduce a recipe from my grandma again, which I found in her little handwritten recipe booklet: peppermint cookies. I had to order the peppermint oil and I wondered how my grandmother got hold of it back in the days. This recipe also requires baking ammonia, which you can find in Germany during the season, but I have no idea where to get it in the U.S. Maybe in a pharmacy? I kid you not, my grandmother has about 10 different peppermint cookies in her recipe book and about half of them require baking ammonia and all do require peppermint oil. When making them, you may think of dying your hair, but the baked cookies won’t taste anything like that. The baking ammonia makes these cookies extra soft and extra fluffy. If you are a peppermint lover, these cookies are for you!
Guys, I have not introduced a classic apple pie yet. What a shame! As October is the months of apples and apple picking, I decided to introduce it now. Apple pie is something almost everybody loves, even though pie crust can be a little intimidating. If you would like to learn how to deal with pie crust, I recommed this blog post. But let’s give the floor to apple pie!
My granny was the queen of yeast dough. I cannot recall a single time that her yeast dough was anything else but fluffy, soft, and most delicious. I will never forget her sheet cakes prepared with yeast dough. Complimented with lots of fruit and crumbs, they were always a highlight for me. In low German these sheet cakes are called “plautz” and they have always been one of my favorite. I especially liked trying the middle piece of any sheet cake. This piece gives you a lot of fruit, a lot of crumbs, with just about the right amount of dough. My granny didn’t mind giving me the middle piece of a sheet cake. Which I of course loved. I have been thinking about her famous sheet cakes for a while now. However, since she passed away recently, I knew I had to bake a cake since she was not going to. I inherited her recipe book, which I cherish. But unfortunately, I didn’t find a lot of yeast dough recipes. Probably because she knew it by heart.
Today I am introducing apple cream strudel from Munich. This strudel is a classic from grandma’s time. I am happy that Anna from the German blog Teigliebe agreed to bake together a classic recipe from grandma’s time. We baked together already once, this was during the giveaway from Marc and Andrea, Anna made a super beautiful raspberry rhubarb pie and I made a strawberry pie with roses. I was happy when Anna agreed to bake again with me. I picked the topic “Classic Recipes from Grandma’s Time” due to the fact that my grandma S. passed away recently. At the funeral it was mentioned several times that she was a brilliant baker and cook. Her home was known as a “hotel” even though she did not run any as her food had the standard of a hotel and she loved to host a lot of get-togethers. I distinctly remember her birthdays as the table would be laden down with the weight of oh so many homemade cakes and pies.