Cream of Tartar

Johann's cousin Leo, our housemate, got married to his girlfriend Kathrin at our local Standesamt yesterday. It was a small and quick civil service, with only me, Johann, Gustav, and Kathrin's 21-year old son Hannes in attendance.

Because I have a strong love of baking, Kathrin asked if I would bake them a little wedding cake for the occasion. Oh gladly! What a question! I thought something classic and American might be fun, so I pawed through my Joy of Cooking for ideas. (The internet is good for ideas, but not so much for pawing.)

I debated between a Devil's Food Cake and a German Chocolate Cake -- named, according to the Rombauers, after a Mr. German, who created a kind of baking chocolate, and was not from Germany.

Leo and Kathrin are rather passionate Christians, by American standards and certainly by German standards as well. They spend not only every Sunday but Saturday too with their small church Gemeinschaft. And I don't believe they own a single CD that isn't celebratory Christian rock or soft gospel. (Soft gospel: does such a category even exist?) In any case, I suspected that they maybe wouldn't have been quite as amused as I by the name of the first cake, so I chose to bake the latter.

The recipe in the Joy called for "cream of tartar" to stabilize the egg. Although it's common in the baking aisle of most supermarkets in the US, Johann was unfamiliar with it. We did some sleuthing on the web and discovered that in these here parts it goes by the common name Weinstein or the more scientific Kaliumhydrogentartrat. And wouldn't you know? You can't get it at the supermarket. Even at Reformhaus, the health-conscious organic grocery chain among whose constituents Weinstein is praised as a natural baking powder, it was only available as part of a baking powder mix. For pure Weinstein, we needed to go to the pharmacy.

We went to 3 different Apothekes in our town before we found one that was able to get it to us that day. They had to order it from their supplier in Rostock, and it was ready for pickup a couple hours later. Extraordinary service! Imagine the Safeway specially ordering a jar of cream of tartar for you and having it ready a few hours later!

After that educational little adventure, we now have a wholesale-sized 100g jar of cream of tartar on our kitchen shelf. It did its job admirably in the German Chocolate Cake -- which came out beautifully and was appreciated happily by the bride and groom. One of the great joys of baking. Being a raging sugar bomb (yes, not so unusual for most American cakes) has prolonged its life; we've had to eat it very slowly and in small portions.

Certainly not the worst of fates to befall one of my oven creations.