Instead of listening to Finnish & German music, we decided to try baking cinnamon rolls today. It was really funny to show the girls how we bake them in Finland, and we also found a lot of similarities in the baking style in Finland & in Germany. One difference we found were the use of scales. In Finland the measures are usually in decilitres, whereas in Germany (and many other coutries) they are more often in grams. Additionally, I learned how you can test whether the egg is spoilt or not (you put it into water and if it floats, it’s no longer usable. The gas that forms inside the egg when it spoils makes it float). Really cool!
When the dough was rising, we decided to write down all the ingredients in Finnish and in German. I knew most of the words but didn’t remember them because I don’t get to use them a lot, so it was good practice. The ingredients that we used were: Milch (milk), Eier (eggs), Zucker (sugar), Kardamon (cardamom), Hefe (yeast), Mehl (flour), Butter (butter) and Zimt (cinnamon)+ Teig (dough) and Füllung (filling). We also discussed some rather funny German idioms and the girls explained their background and meanings to me. For example, “Es ist nicht mein Bier” (It’s not my business) probably comes from the times when many families used to own breweries and make their own beers there. Another funny expression was “Es ist mir Wurst” and it means basically “I don’t care” (for example, in a sentence: “Which one do you want? – I don’t care). We tried to think where the idiom comes from but couldn’t think of anything. I find it still very funny 😀 One baking-related word that the girls told me was “Schneebesen” (=whisk) which literally means “snow broom”. The name comes from the snow-looking egg-white (the clear fluid in an egg) that is often stirred with the whisk. I find these explanations really helpful when it comes to remembering certain words.
While eating the buns (they were really good!) we talked about the big German chain stores, like Lidl and Aldi. I learned that Aldi is owned by two brothers who have had some disagreements and that’s why the Aldi shops have been quite different and there are Aldi Süd (Süd=south) and Aldi Nord (Nord=north) stores. It was also surprising that there are Aldis and Lidls in so many countries – there’s even one Lidl in Australia!
Comments