American Baker in Germany

My daughter's preschool has a flea market and bake sale twice a year. I try to make something every time that will sell well. Or I use the cake to practice something. This time I just wanted to sell every slice. What do kids like? Sprinkles! So that was the theme this time. I mixed up a batch of my new favorite vanilla cake.  I added a quarter cup of Wilton nonpareils in two amounts folding gently between.  I stopped folding when I started seeing the first streaks.  I decided to make an 8 inch cake and to cut down on the browning on the outside, I decided to bake it all at once and cut it in half. The batter filled my 8 inch pan all the way to the top.  I should have lined the sides with parchment paper to make it taller, because it spilled over on one side. The browning on the top was so thick, that to check if it was done properly, I had to make a hole in it. Otherwise the crust scraped the toothpick clean and made me think it was done.  I lev...

I haven't been happy with my vanilla cake recipe since the shamrock baptism cake. I realized then, that although my usual go to recipe tasted great and held up well to stacking, the batter was really too thin to do some things like the surprise inside cake, and that it can brown a bit too much sometimes even on the inside. I decided I needed a new go to recipe that doesn't have either of these problems. I found one on pinterest that promised to be what I needed and I decided to try it. It can be found here:  https://sugarspunrun.com/the-best-white-cake-recipe/ Here's the base batter minus the egg whites. Here are the beaten egg whites ready to be folded in. Gently fold them together. And your batter looks like this. Here's what it looks like when baked. Inside is just gorgeous, fluffy white cake. I'm in love! This cake was lighter than my usual one with the whipped egg whites. It did brown some on the outside but the inside was white and...

It came to mind a while back that I had never made a cheesecake since I've lived in Germany. But I'd also never made a lactose free cheesecake before. But with my lactose intolerant four-year-old, I couldn't make another kind. You can get lactose free products in most grocery stores these days, but different brands are available in different stores. If a different brand is available in your local grocery, it should work just as well. I used the recipe from the food network found here.  https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchen/cheesecake-recipe2-2011459 A few ingredients needed substitutions. There are no graham crackers in Germany, so I used butter cookies instead. And I couldn't find lactose free sour cream at my local grocery store, so I substituted lactose free quark. I combined the butter cookie crumbs with the melted butter and a bit of sugar.  I pressed them in the bottom of my 9 inch cake pan and put them in the oven.  While the base w...