Banoffee pie

Well, I have been asked a few times how to produce the Banoffee pie. So, this is how. Though, I am not transforming this into a cooking blog as there is so much good stuff out there. Just check the Grilled Cheese Social, the Pioneer Woman, Saveur and of course BBC (look for Sophie Dahl and Lorraine Pascale). Mainly, this will be about substituting ingredients with stuff that is available in Germany.
For a quite substantial 28cm cake that will serve ten hungry people (or something between 12 and 14 normal people), you'll need:

• Chocolate Hobnobs, which are not available and substituted by one package of wholemeal biscuits (like Leibniz or De Beukelaer)
• A 100g chocolate bar (like something that wasn't sure whether to become milk or dark chocolate)
• About 1.5oz (some 50g) butter
• A tsp baking powder
• Two 14oz (397g) tins of sweetened condensed milk, I'd say Carnation, but in Germany you'll find Dogvan or Steinhauer products. The pre-caramalised stuff is fine and saves you a lot of time. If you can choose, the Steinhauer stuff is a bit more caramelised and more solid making the cake less likely to "melt" away.
• Six medium sized bananas (but since that's the healthy part, you can have six large ones with no probs)
• A big containter double cream (16oz/450g), which is not available in Germany. But there are two options. If you're lucky your supermarket offers "Crème double". There is only one supplier in Germany who lives in Bielefeld and and for some reason they believe it was sort of Crème fraiche (Can you believe it?). Second option is Amazon. They offer a 1l (aka 35 Imperial oz) package of Frischli Creme Double. You'll need four thimble sized packs of Dr Oetker or half a Frischli package.
• Finally, some cocoa for dusting

Once you've got all that stuff together, you've been to a number of shops and assistants will have looked at you as if you were alien. Dare you. Asking for double cream.

The toffee: For starting with the stuff that takes longest, you put the tins with the condensed milk in a saucepan and fill it up with water. You make it boil and leave it there for almost 2 hrs. Take care, the tins have to be covered by water at all times. Otherwise, there is a certain risk of the stuff exploding. Also, you might want to use an old-ish saucepan as something leaves some horrible stains on a stainless steel one. The tins will increase in size over time and they will be piping hot at the end of the process. So, you'll need something to get them out of the water. Maybe place them in the sink for a moment and get some cold water. This will caramelise the condensed milk. If you have the pre-caramelised stuff, you don't have to do that and you save almost two hours. Also, this is already cold and you don't have to wait.

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The pie: Whilst your toffee is boiling, you crush the biscuits. This should be sort of fine crumbles at the end of the process. You add those crumbles, some 1/3 of your chocolate bar finely chopped, the baking powder and the molten butter in a bowl. Mix it nicely. You want to press this in your cake tin such that it is packed and evenly spread out. You put that in the fridge and let it sit.

The banoffee layers: Chop all the bananas and lay half them on your pie. Again, this should be evenly spread out. Then you are careful with opening your first toffee tin. If something squirts out of there on your hand, put it under running cold water right now. Try to spread this toffee evenly (it can be quite thick and sticky and refuse to do so. But it's fine if it's not perfect - we gonna cover this with cream later). Put in the next layer of chopped banana on top of this toffee layer. The remainder of the chocolate should be molten by now (have I told you to put in a bowl and melt it?) and you use a spoon for sort of sprinkling the chocolate it all over the place (but within the boundaries of your tin). The idea is that once the chocolate becomes solid again it provides sort of a grid for stabilising the thing. As a side effect it tastes like a bit of extra chocolate. Finally, you aim for spreading the toffee from the second tin sort of evenly.

The cream: So, this is the double cream. Now, the toffee stuff is all warm and putting whipped cream on warm stuff is not a good idea. So let it sit, put the cake in the fridge until you are like serving it. It's only 5 mins from now. You put the double cream in a bowl and start whipping it, just way more gently than German so-called cream. The cream becomes stiff and fluffy faster than German whipping cream and if you're doing too much it'll turn into butter rather quickly. So give it a gentle whipping. Spread the whipped cream evenly all over the cake. Now this time you actually try to get it nicely evenly spread. Just in case there is some cream left, you might want to do some creamy decoration or just taste whether it's nice and fluffy (though too late for making amendments now). Finally, dust some cocoa powder all over.

Tidying up

Some people start tidying up as one form procrastination, others stumble into performance art or dancing or stuff or typical German food. I decided to have a look into the things that I always wanted to write a post about, but haven't come around doing it.
Okay, IKEA is a place that is in Brackwede and apparently a popular place as I have bought almost all (well, what shall I say) my furniture there. It had been rated down in 2010. Dare you. They have their own loop bus line numbered "123" traveling from "Brackwede, Kirche" to IKEA and back. In other words, you can't miss it. On a side note, Brackwede is pronounced with a long vowel a. Though, that seems to be quite surprising to most people. In a similar case, Hamburg altered the orthography of all place names ending in -beck to -bek in 1946 simply for conserving the long vowel in the pronunciation. The effect of not doing so can be observed in place names like Lübeck and a bit more local Jöllenbeck. These places are pronounced with a short vowel now. Having mentioned what kind of things people make up, let me say a big breakfast is not any more satisfying over the course of the day than my "ridiculously small portion of porridge" (yes, I am getting myself a camera for filming how I am using a mortar for making porridge oats). Anyway, IKEA experienced problems in selling ad-hoc items, such as baskets, glasses, pillows, covers, candles. More precisely, problems refers to lower growth rates of sales than usual, i.e. German customers buy still buy more useless stuff than before, but less more. Two years ago they were planning their first High Street shop in an effort of competing with their competitor stuff sellers with branches in the city centres. The most recent item on their news blog says they might receive allowance to start works mid this year. For making the point really clear, this shop can be reached without using a car or extensive travel on public services. What a move!
The next item is from 3rd November 2010. From today's perspective, reminds me on pussy riot with their naked protest. The High Street soap selling company Lush was said to having pressed staff into joining the "Go Naked Day". Also, shop assistants were said having been trained to refer to customers' private parts purposefully - and it wasn't like "You want to make a clean and well-kept impression there", apparently it was more aimed at size.
Well, German food. But let me say something nice towards the end of February 2011 (I mean with clearing the backlog): Even you have been a criminal and all that, you can become a star. Really.

Dancing prohibition

A day after the German holiday of Fronleichnam, I realise that there was no prohibition of dance in this county. Though, the prohibition of dance is a story of misunderstandings. There is a different set of regulation for each county and each day within a county - and there are regulatory differences on whether sports is performed in public, in private, with the aim of commerce or for regenerating the mental health, and whether the whole day or a just a few hours are affected. Actually, there is no English version in Wikipedia - hopefully the German does. The holiday also involves a Monstranz, e.g. in Cologne (a really dirty building, right next to Central station - seen it when changing for trains to Bruxelles). Nevertheless, the Germans can denunciate each other - for dancing.
What else? The eurozone seems to be in a considerable crisis. One of the main contributors is Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel. In fact, her actions seem to suggest that she attributed the crisis to some less well managed member states. That means some member states overspent and thus, increased their government gross debt excessively. According to this account, these countries have to be regulated and brutal spending cuts especially in pensioners, unemployed and public service staff are inevitable (in Merkel's world). Actually, Spain's government gross debt as a function of GDP is roughly 13 percent points less than Germany's. And one might wonder why Spain has such a hard time refinancing. One answer could be that there is threat of the country being unable to support its struggling banking sector. If that was the case, it would be refinanced by some ESM and in fact be under dictatorship of Merkel. If that is was case, Spain's economy could just close the doors. When Merkel offered benefits for Germans buying cars in an attempt of hindering a recession, no measure of stimulation was an option in her Greek policies. Indeed, Merkel's measures remind the observer on Brüning's ideas of austerity. The result is (and was) an unemployment rate of some 52% amongst adults younger than 25 (eurostat). In Germany, these measures were followed by most horrible parts of history and should increase caution if not hinder any German politician in doing the like. Well, maybe it is a more systematic crisis accompanied by half-hearted rescue measures. This would suggest that Merkel's austerity put Europe at risk and topped the bill for the German taxman.

Topping the daily chaos, my laptop is slowly dying. I suspect the CPU cooling device is not working well resulting sudden shut downs. Germany is suffering the carpet affair (the secret service transported a carpet on behalf of a member of government and did not pay custom). Current projects involve a trifle. Simply for marking the most joyful, relaxed and happy event. In contrast to a civilised pageant, streets tend to involve chaos, e.g. Tehran suffers the cars of its inhabitants. Side note, cars are Germany's main industry and Merkel claimed the premium for buying a new car was key in hindering a recession. Another side note, driving a car in Germany is a right not a privilege. Recently, a severe accident occurred. In the ten o'clock news, the moderator said the accident reminded him opening fire into a forest full of tourists and hoping you only hit the trees. In brief words, the driver suffered epilepsy and had an attack before the accident. Also, he used cannabis during the night before. He was sentenced three and a half years for killing four people and severely injruing another three (sounds little, but driving a car was not his fail, just bad luck it went wrong). Bielefeld's university got an aestehtic centre. Really? Seriously? I suppose it's just me and I should increase my asbestos intake (see this university website featuring research from wikipedia). Bielefeld was also home to two severe events, first a fire and a week later an explosion.

Are you sweaty?

Apparently, the so-called body scanners have been used in trials in Germany, more precisely in Hamburg Fuhlsbüttel. Having flown a number of times in and out of there I am surprised I have never seen one. It is well known that body scanners have downsides, including attacks of co-workers. But on the German side of things the main problem was that these machines triggered a substantial number of false alarms - due to underarm persiparation. As an embarrassing result the home secretary asked security companies to develop a more underarm persiparation proof software (see the news).
Also in Germany, I have been confronted with rather bizarre habits of the natives - more on this later, but first of all I was explained that the most standard-ish standard German is spoken in the city of Hanover. I wondered how come. In the quest, I found two potential reasons: a) the largest so-called Schützenfest (I don't know what it is yet. I guessed it involves a lot of people shooting at something, but picures suggest it's best translated as binge drinking.) in the world is held in Hanover, thus a number of German marksmen might have spread the word that this town would set the standard, or b) Hanover is the most noisy city of Germany and perhaps people have to speak very loud and clear?

Bündnerfleisch

Bündnerfleisch mit gepfefferter Nachfrage.
Gymkhanaprüfung. "Und ich bin überzeugt, Sie wollen das auch."
Im Gegensatz dazu ein deutscher Landtag mit Debatte über landwirtschaftliche Produkte - ein Beitrag der FDP von Heinrich Heidel, sowie im Bundestag Detlef Kleinert für die FDP. Letzterer übrigens Ehrenmitglied der Deutschen Parlamentarischen Gesellschaft.