Erdbeeren Schnitte: Jumping the Gun

June 27, 2015

After much soul searching and considerable tasting, we have come to the conclusion in past years that German bakeries are superior to the French ones. Yes, the French have fabulous croissants and pains au chocolate, and those chaussees (danish) with the two apricots? Brilliant!

The thing is though, after you run through the standard repertoire of ten or twenty items, the French bakeries start to seem all the same.

The German bakeries on the other hand seem to have a larger number of items in each establishment, and usually different items from bakery to bakery.

With this kind of thinking in the background, somehow a standard German item, found everywhere and seemingly not even very fancy caught my imagination. This is the erdberren schnitte, or basically, strawberry shortcake slice. Maybe it was the combination of healthful looking fresh fruit coupled with honest plain cake that seemed so good while cycling, or maybe it was the fact that the berries were encased in glossy gelatin, that provided some effective flash.

Well, on arriving back from Europe last time, I decided I could recreate some of the magic by making my own schnitte. Unfortunately, as with all great baked goods, it is never as simple as it looks. The things to think about are what is the cookie like base made from? Does a jam layer follow? How do you make that plain cake so that it does not taste quite plain? Could you use Betty Crocker yellow cake mix? And should there be a pudding, or is it cheese (quark) layer next. Finally, should the berries be drowned in gelatin, or strawberry jello, or something else? Whatever it is, how do you keep the gelatin liquid from soaking into the cake before it jells?

As you can see, my mind is a jumble, and this was reflected in several horrible tries before I gave up and just started saving my pennies for a return to Germany. Of course, we do now have our tickets, and this blog today says 24 days until start. Tomorrow is the last day when we can visit with friends and family, before heading out for Idaho, where Grampies Grand Adventure will come before we fly to Brussels. So for tomorrow's festivities I asked our German friend Sandra to use a can of Polish poppyseed filling that we happen to have, to make strudel. But seeing as there are so many strawberries in the garden, she suggested that she would make erdbeeren schnitte! Wow!

Now it turns out that the schnitte questions that swirl through my mind are actually fairly legitimate, and Sandra herself had ideas to contribute on how to cope with the relative lack of quark cheese in these parts, the proper thickness of the gelatin, the way the berries are arranged, the total height of the slice, etc.

Dodie and I put in some votes that Sandra tried to accommodate- more Mascarpone, less Ricotta, double the gelatin thickness. But overall Sandra just gave a demonstration of how you really do it. How did it turn out? Don't know, quite. The family will judge tomorrow. But it looks great, and a good way to hold out for those 24 days. (Longer actually, because on arrival we need to first slog our way through the Belgian and then French bakeries.)

Disclaimer: This trip around we do not intend to pig out in bakeries. Judicious research only will be the order of the day!

Sandra has the mystery cookie base and the cake layer organized quite quickly!

Neither of these is the proper "Quark", but we hope to make a simulated version by combining in some proportion and adding lemon juice.

The berries came straight from the garden.

We were ready to use Knox gelatin, but Sandra found some "official" Dr. Oetker. "Tortenguss" is hard to translate. Torten are, loosely, pies, and "guss" means "cast" but maybe we would say "gell". **Flash** Google Translate (and "Sandra" Translate)notwithstanding, Dodie correctly says the right word is "glaze".

Top view of the final product. Stay tuned as we "slice" the schnitte tomorrow!

An image of the standard product from the internet. This has little or no cheese layer and lots of gelatin. Sandra would call this an "industrial" version of low quality.

Winner!

The family today universally praised the erdberren schnitte. There was still lively discussion about the thickness of the cake layer, overall height, amount of glaze, ability of the slices to be cut neat and straight, with no cheese crumbs, etc. etc. On the other hand, there was none left on any plates, and the surplus slices got spirited away by interested parties, so it was really a total success.

Does this mean we now can stay home and quit wandering the bakeries of Europe? Not in the slightest. I can feel quite a hankering for quark taschen coming on!

It was hard to make a precision rectangular cut, but the schnitte was delicious!

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