American Baker in Germany

 I have two girls. So I had to make my zebra cake pink. As usual during the pandemic, I don't have an occasion to bring this cake to, so I am decorating an 8-inch cake dummy. I frosted it with vegan American buttercream. I covered the cake with pink fondant. And I smoothed it on with my hands. Trimmed off the excess and pressed the lip tight into the cake. And trimmed off the last lip. Then, to make zebra stripes, I just made some squiggly stripes and then cut them in half with a diagonal line. Each stripe should end in a point. I placed them on the edge of the cake. So, this is where we are now. Looking great so far! Then I cut more pointed stripes, this time pointed on both ends, and placed them in roughly the same direction. You do want some element of randomness. But how sweet is this pink zebra cake? It's perfect for the girly zebra stripe fan. Watch us make this girly zebra cake on our YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/gMHWFVwLW8A Schaut zu wie wir diese mädchenhafte...

 Pfefferkuchen literally means pepper cake. However, not only is there no actual pepper in this recipe, it's not even cake. It's more like gingerbread cookies or gingersnaps. So, why is it called pepper cake? Well, this recipe is very old. And by very old, I mean very, very old. This recipe came about at a time before spices were generally used in any recipes, let alone cake or cookie recipes. When spices of any kind, including ginger or cinnamon, were finally available for use in sweet recipes, they were all called pepper. They just used pepper to mean spice. So, that's why pepper is in the name. (I should also say that there are a very large amount of variations of the recipe because of the age of the recipe.)  The reason it's called cake even though it's actually cookies is because there was a time when all sweet things were called cake in German. After all, we also call it gingerbread, even though it has nothing in common with bread. So, now that we're over ...

 It just so happens that my brother and brother-in-law were born in the same year. And coincidentally, they both turned 40 this year. I made my brother a big, extravagant cake for his 40th birthday, so I had to make my brother-in-law a 40th birthday cake, too. Except, we were actually able to give my brother-in-law his cake. So, I made a batch of Swiss meringue buttercream.... with strangely very yellow butter... I colored some navy blue. And some medium blue. Then I filled a pumpkin spice cake with the buttercream. And I frosted the cake. And again to cover all the cake. I put the navy blue buttercream in piping bags with a small and a medium round tip, the medium blue in a piping bag with a medium star tip and "white" with a small star tip. Then I pressed the words Happy Birthday and the number 40 into the cake to use as a guide. And I followed the lines with the navy blue buttercream. And I piped a pear border along the bottom of the cake with the navy blue buttercream. Th...