Coffee Cake

The old coffee cake!

Every year my mother makes Coffee cake for thanksgiving and than for christmas. I usually helped by rolling the dough into the butter and the cinnomen( cant spell that, let alone say it right). I never really watched my mom make the dough I just did the finsihing touches and sprinkled some rasins on after. It is weird not being with my family this year so I wanted to do something traditional and make Coffee cake. Little did I know that making it was alot harder than I had thought.

I was at school when my class teacher came in and started to discuss what everyone was bringing for tomorrow for the christmas party. Everyone said they were bringing something and than someone started yelling someone has to bring Kaffee Koeche I said oh coffee cake, and sophie flipped aroudn and said oh you know coffee cake and I said yeah I am going to make some. I meant I was going to make some for my family but she quickly rose her hand and said OHH Hannah bringt das( hannah is bringing that). The teacher looked so happy that I was participating in their christmas fun so I didnt want to ruin it. So while I was in school I was traslating all of the indgredients over into english. It was really hard to translate active dry yeast because there is no such word, everythign else went smoothly. I had my list and I went to the store. If I thought finding the words in the dictionary were a little tricky I should of at least expected that finding them would be even harder. I am so use to going into Safeway and knowing where everything is and if not I can just walk until I find it. But the store is set up so differntly here things that should be by each other are not, and other things that shouldent be there are. I felt bad asking where everything was all the time, so I tried not to ask the same lady twice but I am glad that I did ask because there would be no way I could of found everything by myself. So now that I had all the ingredients I headed for home. I dropped everything off before picking up Margy at the train station and I felt really proud of myself for buying everything I needed for only 17 euros. Once Margy and I were back we started to get to work. I am glad Margy was there because she helped me convert everything which was actually the really tricky part because she did not know how to cook( so she says), and I did not know how to convert. It took awhile for us to get the dough ready and Margy kept on asking me if it looked right.... I actually didnt know, usually my mom makes the dough I never even bother to watch her make it I just know my job of rolling the dough into little balls putting it in the butter and than rolling it into the cinnomen sugar mixture. We finally got done with our first batch and it took me forever to get all the dough off my hands because it was wedged in between my fingures. Margy had to keep on telling my host sister Jona not to eat the dough yet because it wasnt ready.... it was nice that Jona was helping us though she really liked watching us make something and we tried to find little things that she could help with, like putting the flour in, or mixing the sugar with the Cin. and other things in that area. Silke my host mom kept on checking in and even made fun of Margy's radio station that she had on ^^. Carina helped mix the flour into the dough which is actually a great arm work out by the way... maybe I should start a new excercise programm..." bake the pounds off with Hannah". The longest part of the whole process was probably waiting for it to rise... after a half and hour or so we started our second batch and we were actually doing really great, we made it so much faster than our first one and I kept on thinking for some reason we were forgetting something... only until just now did I remember we forgot to put the eggs in there, so I hope the cake tastes alright :S.

The first batch was finished rising and so Margy helped me roll the dough into little balls.... and you know the rest. Margy pointed out that you can tell the difference between her dough balls and mine... but thats because unlike margy I could go Pro in the dough ball making business ^^. Margy than had to leave leaving me with the rest of the baking. Once again I had to wait a half an hour for the thing to rise, and while it was rising I started to roll the second batch into the pan. everything was done and than i put the first cake into the oven, it became clear in just a couple minutes that americans always make it bigger. My cake was rolling off the sides of the pan, my host mother was laughing and making sounds to mimick the sound that a cake would make if it had a mouth. Overall my cake turned out pretty good, and now I just have to wait and see how my second cake tastes without the eggs in it... I hope it doesnt taste too bad because thats the cake thats going to school tomorrow... yikes