Germany 2015

The race that didn't happen.

Despite this year's financial disputes leading to the lack of a German GP, I still wanted us to celebrate the country in our world tour of cake. I could tell you the inevitable result anyway: 1 Hamilton, 2 Rosberg, 3 Vettel and both Mclarens retired.

As a child I inherited a feeling that Germany had been the bad boy in Europe, having started two world wars - though the historical accuracy of that I now see is somewhat flawed. But having since made friends with a few of the sausage and mayonnaise eating people and having visited their lands a couple of times, I am now more willing to accept them. (After all, if politics had anything to do with it, we probably wouldn't celebrate the Russian GP.)

So we made today Scharzweiβ Gebäck - checkerboard cookies - a German Christmas treat. There are any number of more obvious choices (e.g. Black Forest cake) but I was going lazy - especially since Ecclestone had become lazy about making a German GP.

A word of advice: When the online recipe says "easier to make than they seem", one must consider how easy they seem - this phrase does not mean that they are easy. We had some fun with the sequences of rolling and cutting - and even Natalya gave her assistance.

Not bad taste, but could be better - like a poor man's shortbread.

Natalya presents her contribution - not to mistaken for Natalya threatening Heidi (it's in the facial expression)

Heidi apparently blissfully captivated by the cookie

Natalya fakes a dislike to the cookie

...and then actually eating it.

For those of you who are avid fans of the blog ( or just fans of cake) and are perhaps confused by the missing entries, Hungary will be added shortly - only we were in France for the race weekend, which made making a complicated cake somewhat impossible.