Here's a perennial favorite: apfelkuchen. I tried a slice in Berlin, while sitting at an outdoor cafe near a riverbank. It was good, but not outstanding. But as you can tell, the presentation was lovely.
On to Wittenberg, where ice cream abounds! My German language skills are not so good (3 years of high school German...that's a long time ago) -- so I thought I had ordered six cookies. Instead, I got six scoops of ice cream. Good thing there were others to help out! Perhaps the tastiest in the bunch was the blueberry buttermilk ice cream seen here on top.
While in Eisleben we had lunch at a lovely hotel where even having a cup of tea was turned into a special occasion. Those at my table took the advice of a nearby table of pilgrims: "the apfelkuchen is divine, the ice cream even better." Always trust a Lutheran woman when she gives pastry and ice cream critiques. Our fellow pilgrims were right on both accounts.
The final stop on this brief culinary tour is Leipzig with the famed Leipziger Lerchen. As the story goes, the people of Leipzig were so fond of shooting larks that the birds were nearly extinct. So the king stopped all hunting of larks and the clever pastry chefs saw an opportunity. They created a pastry to look like a lark. That was back in the mid-1800s and the larks are still popular throughout Leipzig. I found this one at a little cafe in the same passageway as Auerbachs Keller. It is a shortbread-type affair, filled with almond marzipan. It looks more like a muffin than a lark, but my, how tasty it is!Returning to our opening thought, I love a place where you can have baked pretzels (served as a roll) for breakfast and nobody is ashamed about it! Don't get me started on the great mustards available for those hot pretzels...
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