Everyone who knows me, or at least reads the blog knows that I couldn’t imagine my life without sweets and chocolate. I deeply believe in something I’ve once heard while celebrating women’s day, or in some other lovely circumstances: it’s better to end your life with a chocolate in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, while your organism is a bit worn out, but also with a big smile on your face and an unmentionable exclamation of delight! 🙂
I will also continue to praise another famous theory that states: if chocolate is made of theobroma cacao, and theobroma is a tree, and a tree is a plant, than chocolate should be classified as a salad. I don’t know about you but I have my little “salad” almost every day – and I’m not going to stop, I just might turn on the workout routine by a fitness coach Ewa Chodakowska in order to make room for the future salads 🙂
So, in the mood of “not restraining from pleasures”, take your Saturday coffee / tea, with a cake and join us for our subjective take on the German sweets available to try on Christmas fairs, and in other occasions. I call it a subjective take predominantly because we didn’t manage to try everything during our short journey, and so we couldn’t have conducted a more profound research 🙂 So, let’s start with sweets available on Christmas markets!
1) GINGERBREAD AND FRÜCHTEBROT
beautifully decorated gingerbread – a great accessory
There are plenty of gingerbreads on Christmas stalls! We bought the colourful, decorated, heart-shaped ones during Oktoberfest – they serves as a great home decoration or as a small present for a friend, or family member.
You can find small and large gingerbreads with icing, or chocolate, and our favourite früchtebrot – Christmas dried fruit bread. You can buy früchtebrot in various sizes, and if you don’t know that you’re going to like it – get a thick slice for €1 or €1.5 and just taste it. The bread contains i.e. nuts, apricots, dates, and figs. It tastes deliciously! And although it has plenty of calories, at least you feel like you’re having a quite healthy desert!
Toruń is not the only one famous for gingerbread
fruchtebrot with dried fruits and nuts
2) MARZIPAN
When I think of marzipans, I usually think of my mom’s childhood friend who has been living in Germany for many years. Because, almost every time she brought us something from Germany, it was a variation on marzipan. It could be small, large, covered in chocolate, or maybe in the shape of thalers with Mozart on the wrapper? I used to love marzipan, especially the delicious so-called marzipan potatoes (marzipankartoffeln). Afterwards, I got over it and forgot about it for a very long time! However, it’s worth returning to marzipan when your are in Germany, especially that they have entire stalls specializing in marzipan delicacies combined with chocolate, nougat and many other bee’s knees!
We chose a bag of small marzipan potatoes, left the market, ate 5 of them or so, and returned for 2 more bags… For a present, because they were so delicious! 🙂
marzipan potatoes
3) STOLLEN or STRIEZEL
Stollen or striezel cake is a heavy yeast cake prepared specially for Christmas and deriving from Dresden – that’s where the name of the Dresden Christmas fair derives from – Striezelmarkt. Traditionally, the cake contains dried fruits and is prepared a few weeks before Christmas. Afterwards it’s covered with butter and sprinkled with a thick layer of caster sugar. Indeed, it is heavy and rather filling but it’s worth trying!
We bought a small piece of stolen to bring back home, not only because of the taste and to bring something new to the Christmas table, but mainly because Łukasz’s parents used to live in Dresden a long time ago when Łukasz was little, and they still remember the taste of striezel. During this Christmas it will bring back the memory of the past holidays 🙂
choose your striezel
4) KRÄPPELCHEN
When we got to Leipzig and took a walk around the city centre I was instantly fascinated by the content of the omnipresent paper bags resembling the bags used for chips. It turned out that they contained kräppelchen – small donuts covered with caster sugar. They reminded me a little of another delicacy that we used to have not so long ago on the streets of Chinatown in Bangkok – however, in Thailand they were covered with coconut sauce, and here they were covered with the homey caster sugar. To be honest, they weren’t so spectacular, but they are quite popular in Leipzig – it’s probably connected with the fact that many people associate them with the taste of their childhood 😉
small krappelchen donuts – for 2, 3 euro
5) APFELSTRUDEL
Except for sweets available from Christmas markets, there are also “restaurant” deserts. Of course, a German variant of our apple pie, orapfelstrudel is served in almost every restaurant and it’s mandatory to try it. What I like most about it is the marvellous vanilla sauce that adds a completely new undertone to the apple pie and I adore this new flavour! Together with the so-calledgermknödel, or a huge round dumpling (knödel) stuffed with prunes, covered with vanilla sauce and sprinkled with poppy seeds – this dumpling always reminds me of Austria, but we’ve also seen it in Berlin or Nuremberg, although we were too stuffed to try it…
And what about other deserts? Dresden offered nice cheese pies and Nuremberg offered plums with gingerbread ice-cream – good but a bit too sweet… even for me 😉
apfelstrudel with ice-cream, wiped cream and vanilla sauce
little Dresden cheesy pies with apple mouse
plum “compote” with gingerbread ice-cream
PS. I completely forgot about a very simple Christmas fair desert sometimes available also in Poland – fruits in chocolate 🙂 Trivial but delicious!
PS. 2 And what are you having for desert today? Have a sweet day!
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