I can tell it's been a long time since I posted - I found a photo from mid-February today and it was of our street covered in snow. Since my last post it's started to be spring here - it's still tentative, but I saw my first crocuses (croci?) today, the trees outside our balcony are slowly, slowly coming to life and there's a little leftover pot of tulips on our balcony trying their best to grow. So, it's about time I got back to writing! As you can probably tell, life here has been busy. I'm definitely finding it a bit difficult to balance working and all the other fun things I was doing before I started working, like -ahem- writing blog posts and cooking.
I think that things are starting to come back into balance. Last weekend I made cupcakes, which was a good start. This weekend I made cheese and an apple cake, and Zoli finished two cutting boards. So - we're getting back to normal, slowly but surely.
Now that I'm an actual employee at my institute, I have had the joy of experiencing German bureaucracy. Zoli had to go through all of this when we first got here, which was even more overwhelming considering everything else. This past month it was my turn, under less frenzied circumstances and at a workplace where non-Germans are a rarity. (I think there are five of us, total.) When I started doing bench work in the lab one of the first things I had to do was get my Laufzettel signed by various people in the institute, from the guy in the mail room to the librarian to the director of the institute. In some ways it's a nice concept since then people actually see your face and know who you are (theoretically) but it's also a huge pain. It involves wandering all over the building to find everyone, not the easiest task when you're new and don't know where anything is. (If you ever have to do this don't try to find people between 10 and 10:30, that's coffee break time.)
Becoming official required many documents in addition to the Laufzettel, including our seriously unofficial-looking marriage certificate and my doctoral certificate (very important so I'm glad I brought it with me). The most entertaining thing they required was a Polizeiliches Führungszeugnis, essentially a certificate of good conduct from the police, that I had to request from the Einwhonermeldeamt along with my Lohnsteuerkarte (tax card) so I could be paid. Thankfully the woman who waited on us was patient - I even practiced how to say Führungszeugnis before we went and it was still only somewhat comprehensible. But I ultimately got what I needed. I think I might even be in the right tax class.
Aside from the bureaucracy it's always fun starting work in a new lab. Though many techniques are the same, the particulars of how labs do things are quite different. It reminds me a lot of cooking, actually - though different cookbooks will tell you the "right" way to do something, there are many right ways and ultimately how you do something is up to personal experience and preference. At first I find it easiest to do things the way others do in the lab - at least until I get my bearings and am able to decide whether I like my "right" way better. I'm also learning totally new things, which is the most exciting part - I learned how to dissect mosquitoes to get malaria parasites out of their salivary glands, and to look at a blood smear to determine whether red blood cells are infected with malaria parasites. I'm really enjoying working on something infectious-disease related where I still get to take pretty pictures of cells.
This past Monday was the last day in lab for the postdoc I'm replacing before the start of her Mutterschutz. Maternity leave here is pretty impressive, it starts six weeks before your due date, and then you can take up to a year of paid leave with your job guaranteed at the end of it. She was a great person to work with and I'm already missing her in the lab, but we gave her a fun send-off for which I baked sehr amerikanishe cupcakes.
The cupcake craze has not made it to Germany and I don't know that it ever will, but I was able to find cupcake pans and liners so there may yet be hope. After living within walking distance of two fabulous cupcake places in Seattle I've gone through a bit of cupcake withdrawal here. Thankfully I have some good cupcake recipes and this is my go-to for chocolate cupcakes.
My mom got this recipe from a cookbook put out by the Ivyland Fire Company sometime in the 1970s, and it's both easy and fabulous. She always fills them with whipped cream - the filling is optional but highly recommended. This time I added diced, sugared strawberries to the whipped cream - not the usual never-fail chocolate cupcakes but not half bad. And definitely not a failure.
Never-Fail Chocolate Cupcakes
24 cupcakes
2 eggs
2/3 cup cocoa
2/3 cup butter, softened
1 3/4 cup flour
2/3 cup sour milk
1 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup hot water
Optional filling:
1 pint heavy cream
1/2-1 tsp vanilla extract
granulated sugar
powdered sugar for dusting
Preheat oven to 350˚ F. Line 24 cupcake tins with paper liners, or grease well.
Put ingredients in bowl in order listed. (I usually sift the cocoa in because it's clumpy - you may want to do the same for the baking soda for the same reason, but they're fine if you don't - see recipe title.) Do not beat until the last item has been added. Then beat well. (I do this with an electric mixer, but I'd bet it would work by hand, too.) Divide batter between cupcake tins. Bake for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool briefly in the pan, then remove and cool on a wire rack (or a plate, or in the pans, they're not that picky - see recipe title).
The cupcakes are great straight-up, but if you're going to fill them, let them cool completely. With a small, sharp knife cut a cone-shaped piece out of the top of each cupcake. Whip the cream for a minute or two, add the sugar and vanilla, then continue whipping until the cream holds fairly firm peaks but doesn't start to clump. (You don't want the cream to be too droopy unless you're serving these immediately.) Fill each cupcake with a large dollop of cream, then put the top back on each cupcake, pressing down slightly so the cream squidges out a bit. Dust the tops with powdered sugar immediately before serving.
(To add strawberries to the filling, I diced maybe a 1/2 pint of strawberries and added 2-3 tsp. sugar and let them sit for about 30 minutes. Instead of adding sugar to the whipped cream, I folded in the strawberries after the cream was whipped and then filled the cupcakes.)
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