So who did invent whipped cream?

Indianerkrapfen

Trying to cook from the 27-book Time-Life international series is overwhelming! I sit down to write a grocery list, happily flip through one book after another, and 3 hours later look up and don't have a grocery list which is cool because I no longer have the energy to go to the grocery store. I may have to refine my approach.

Indianerkrapfen. Not a pretty word in English, so we'll call them Indianer cakes. The recipe comes from The Cooking of Vienna's Empire (part of the Time-Life series) by Joseph Wechsberg, a revered food writer whose Blue Trout and Black Truffles I once read but remember nothing about. He offers an account of the invention of Indianer cakes that is so silly I almost don't want to waste the energy typing it. But will: A Hindu tightrope walker traveled to Vienna in 1850 and a woman was watching him traverse the tightrope between two towers when her husband told her to quit staring This pissed her off and she threw a lump of dough at him. The dough landed in a pan of hot fat and when she pulled it out she filled it with whipped cream, iced it with chocolate, and named the new cake in honor of the Hindu tightrope walker.

This is the stage where you think you have failed.

Do you believe that? Neither do I. Wechsberg also writes that a Viennese housewife invented whipped cream and while the Austrians do seem to eat a lot of it,  I don't believe that either. Wikipedia concurs.

To make Indianer cakes, you mix an airy batter of cornstarch, flour, sugar, and egg and bake in a muffin tin. Cool the muffin-cakes, which will be sunken and misshapen, scoop out the middle of each, and fill the hollow with whipped cream. Turn the cakes cream-side down and glaze the tops with chocolate. The cakes resemble profiteroles, but instead of firm, bland choux-paste shells, the Indianer shells are tender and sweet, like a French cruller. I loved them. Everyone did. They were gone in 24 hours.

The recipe had problems, principally, the glaze. You're supposed to melt unsweetened chocolate with water, sugar, corn syrup, and cream, then whisk in beaten egg at the end. I knew this was going to fail and fail it did, yielding a thin, oily fluid full of scrambled egg bits. I threw it out and made an easier glaze from Kaffeehaus by Rick Rodgers that worked beautifully. Rodgers offers a somewhat different technique for Indianer cakes that I want to try, as well as a more plausible story of their origin. I will print a recipe for Indianer cakes as soon as I've got it perfected because they are really, really special.

like greasy quesadillas, but less tasty

Less special: the Tunisian brik from Quintet of Cuisines. You place a mound of seasoned ground lamb on a square of fillo dough, crack an egg on the lamb, fold the fillo into a triangle, and fry for a few minutes. A diagram would have helped with the fillo origami and I also could have used a few words on how to fry the brik because: too fast and they will brown before the egg inside has cooked. This happened. Wet, gelatinous egg, tasty lamb, oily filo. I would give the recipe another shot and try to correct my errors, but just don't love savory fillo pastries enough to bother.

On another subject, I had to go back to Monterey this past weekend and saw something in the backyard of a historic adobe that reminded me of a big project I have not yet completed:

Oh, go away, not now.

I was so gung ho about our pizza oven last fall, but the weather got bad so we had to stop before applying the final layer of insulation and plaster. Now the weather is lovely again and all I want to do is sit on the deck eating cherries and flipping through books on Austrian pastries.