Es gibt übrigens auch

www.foodfromhome.de

für die Verzweifelten.

Braunen Zucker und Buttermilch kann man doch in jedem Laden kaufen. Wozu durch seltsame Rezepturen ersetzen?

Oder versteht man in USA unter "Brown Sugar" und "Buttermilk" etwas anderes?

Gibt es eigentlich in D irgendwo Reese's Peanut Butter Cups?

Danke Chefkoch, da sind ein paar prima Sachen dabei.

@Gero - bei Galeria Kaufhof habe ich unten in der Lebensmittelabteilung (oder wie auch immer diese überteuerte Teil heisst) welche gesehen.

@ dirk: ein wenig mehr Feingefühl, wenn ich bitten darf. Wenn Du, evtl. sogar zwangsweise (wg. Job o.ä.) in ein Dir völlig fremdes Land müßtest, würdest Du Dich auch freuen, an heimische Lebensmittel zu kommen, oder? Und amerikanisches Graubrot schmeckt bestimmt nicht mal ähnlich wie das deutsche, nehme ich mal an.
Und lebst DU vielleicht nur von braunem Zucker und Buttermilch?? - Na also.

@Katharina: Dirk hat doch nur diese beiden genannten Punkte aus der Liste angesprochen und bei genau denen hatte ich den gleichen Gedanken. Die beiden Einträge gehören einfach gestrichen - es sei denn, man versteht in USA unter Buttermilch und braunem Zucker etwas ganz anderes als hier.

@dirk: Ja, beim brauen Zucker gibt es schon einen Unterschied. Der Brown Sugar, den ich in den Staaten kaufen, ist etwas weicher, er rieselt nicht so sehr wie der gewöhnliche braune Zucker, der man in Deutschland bekommt. Abgesehen davon ist der Brown Sugar aus den Staaten aus Zuckerroher gemacht und nicht aus Rübenzucker. Noch dazu gibt's bei uns LIGHT BROWN SUGAR und DARK BROWN SUGAR zu kaufen.
Wenn ich bestimmte amerikanische Kekse hier backe, dann nur mit brown sugar aus den Staaten. Bei der Konsistenz macht es schon was aus.

Die Buttermilch, die man in Deutschland kauft, ist m.E. auch ein bißchen anders, etwas fetter, und viel besser als was bei uns im Supermarkt zu kaufen ist.

Aber egal. Wie Katharina schon sagte, wenn man etwas vermisst, dann vermisst man es halt.

@Bahama Mama: "Brauner Zucker" ist bei uns in der Tat aus Zuckerrüben, aber es gibt auch "Rohrzucker" und "Rohzucker [man beachte das fehlende r !!] aus Zuckerrohr" - das dürfte genau das sein, was du suchst.

In Bezug auf braunen Zucker kann ich Bahama Mama nur bestaetigen. Auch in UK ist der braune Zucker total anders, als der deutsche. Es gibt verschiedene Grade von braun und das Aroma ist viel besser, weil er aus Zuckerrohr gemacht wird.

@ Markus: I have tried all the German variations of brown sugar and regardless of whether they are made from beet sugar or sugar cane, they do not have this slightly moist, less crunchy consistency that brown sugar in the States does. So thank you for your suggestion but believe me when I say it is NOT the same thing.

I can, however, now find light brown sugar from Tate & Lye that has the slighty moist (for want of a better description) that is exactly what I would use in the States.

As for the listing on that website about buttermilk, it doesn't surprise me that there is a SUBSTITUTE listed. That same substitute can be found on many U.S. cooking sites, for the very simple reason that most people don't already have buttermilk at home. However, most people do have milk (usually) and a lemon, and can settle for the substitute instead of having to run out to a store at 3 am. to buy buttermilk.

Stimmt, der Zucker schmeckt anders und ist klebriger, allerdings liegt das möglicherweise am Produktionsverfahren oder Sirupanteil des braunen Zuckers, weniger daran, dass er aus Zuckerrohr oder Zuckerrüben ist. z.B. ein größerer Sirupanteil. Chemisch gesehen ist es eigentlich das Gleiche (oder? Gibt es hier Chemiker? Bitte kommentieren.)
Brauner Zucker in Dtl. ist m. W. Raffinade, die mit Sirup gemischt und nochmals zentrifugiert wird.

PS: Demerara-Zucker ist etwas anders als der gewöhnliche braune Zucker. Klebriger und eher wie brown sugar

@Katharina: Ich wollte wirklich nur diese beiden Punkte kritisieren und nicht die ganze Liste!
Was den braunen Zucker angeht: Auf dem, den ich immer kaufe, steht drauf: Rohrohrzucker (hübsches Wort, sollte man nicht falsch trennen:-)). Der ist doch dann wohl aus Zuckerrohr gemacht, oder? Und ob eine Mischung aus Weißzucker, Honig und Rübensirup dem rieseligen amerikanischen Braunzucker näher kommt als der klebrige deutsche (es gibt übrigens auch sehr verschiedene) wage ich zu bezweifeln ...

@ dirk: ich kann mir die Liste nicht ansehen, da ich hier im Büro nur ganz stark eingeschränkten Internet-Zugang habe. Und über die chemische Zusammensetzung div. Zuckerarten weiß ich leider auch nciht genügend Bescheid, um mich darüber mit Dir auseinandersetzen zu können. Mir ging es um Deine Einstellung, 'aber bitte... brauner Zucker wird ja wohl überall auf der Welt das Gleiche sein, oder etwas nicht??'. Wie wir jetzt beide erfahren haben, scheint ebendies nicht der Fall zu sein.

Sorry, habe gerade gemerkt, dass ich das falsch herum verstanden hatte. Der amerikanische Zucker ist klebrig, der deutsche rieselt.

@Katharina

Wo genau liegt eigentlich Dein Problem????

Lies doch bitte nochmal dirks "Zusatz": "Oder versteht man in USA unter "Brown Sugar" und "Buttermilk" etwas anderes?"

Was soll also diese anpampen??

@ grippie: nein, lies *DU* bitte nochmal mein posting von Fri Feb 24 15:11:21. ich habe wirklich keine Lust, mich deinetwegen ständig zu wiederholen.

Bahama Mama - meine Chocolate Chip Cookies werden auch immer eher crunchy statt chewy. Ich mache die Butter oft in der Mircowelle warm, dann löst sich der Zucker besser.
Das Problem bei mir ist, dass die dt. Schokolade bzw. chocolate chips nicht richig weich werden.
Kurz nach dem Backen sind sie prima und später werden sie dann krümelig.

Any tips?

Oh, welch netter Umgangston!!!

@grippie, Katharina: Peace, please! Ich fühle mich von Katharina nicht 'angepampt', wenn auch die Wiedergabe meiner angeblichen Einstellung von einem Missverständnis zeugt. Meine Frage
>Oder versteht man in USA unter "Brown Sugar" und "Buttermilk" etwas anderes?
war wirklich genau so gemeint, nämlich als Frage, ohne jede Ironie. Und sie ist beantwortet.

@dj: Yes, I have tips. They work for me but I don't know if they'll work for you.

Undercook (underbake) your cookies just a bit, maybe 1-2 minutes less than the recipe calls for. Take them off the cookie sheet and put them on the rack to cool immediately. This should make them a bit chewier. Make sure you put them in an airtight container as soon as they cool down.

I am also constantly messing around with the recipe, adding a bit more flour so they aren't as crunchy.

I do not use just German butter. I only did that once years ago and those cookies ran together and made one big, gloppy mess. I use a combination of roughly 3/4 margarine and 1/4 of the butter the recipe calls for.

My best and latest discovery is: Make your cookie dough, put it in the fridge overnight and bake the cookies the next day. I find the cookies are even better.

I bring chocolate chips back from the States. Have never tried the Schokotropfen here but they might be OK. It's just that you only get a tiny amount, plus I'm not sure if the Schokotropfen are semi-sweet or milk chocolate. I only go for semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Oh, and I only use Backpapier. But if you are German, then you probably do too. No more of those baking sheets I used in the States. Not without Backpapier, that is.

Great, thanks!
I'll definitely try that.

As for choloate chips - the Schwartau ones are ridiculously overpriced. I guess I will make do with smashed-up Blockschokolade. Maybe I should hang around the pubs and try to find someone who can get me into the PX. They probably have decent corn chips, too...

@dj: Oh yes, corn chips. That's another item on my "I gotta have" list. It's hard to find a substitute for Fritos.

However, I did find corn chips on a recent trip to Italy. Any they actually tasted pretty good! I bought them from 2 different makers, and ended up getting 2 different size chips. In one bag they were the regularly sized chip, and the other bag had the bigger size, like Fritos dipping chips or whatever they call them. Now I keep my eyes peeled for them when I go to Italy.....or I bug people I know making a trip to Italy.

Good luck with getting chocolate chips through a PX. All I can say is that I have search and searched the Internet and for some odd reason, chocolate chips are just not sold on sites like the one mentioned in this thread. I wonder why.

Re: chemische Zusammensetzung Zucker
ist in Rohr wie in Ruebenzucker die gleiche, naemlich Saccharose. Bei braunem Zucker, der in Deutschland produziert wird, wird weisser (d.h. vorher aufgereinigter) Zucker mit Melasse (aus Zuckerrohr) versetzt, eben damit er nicht klebt, sondern rieselt. Ausserdem hat Ruebenmelasse einen etwas eigenen Geschmack.
Wie das in den USA gehandhabt wird, weiss ich nicht genau. Da dort aber uebrwiegend Rohrzucker verwendet wird, koennte ein Aufreinigngsschritt entfallen.

Die Unterschiede beim Backen duerften aber eher gering sein.

@Bahama Mama: If I'm not completely off the track when I assume, that what you refer to as "chewy" is what we call "mürbe" in German (is it, dj?), then putting the dough in the fridge overnight is definitely a good idea. Another one would be to knead the dough only very mildly, and as quickly as possible. This way the gluten will not come out of the flour and the cookies stay "mürbe".

@DJ and bahamamama
what are corn chips ?- I always thought they were the same as taco chips (which you can even get at Aldi Süd) so I've obviously been misled.

@Lis: Let's see....first of all, corn chips are not tortilla chips. Without getting scientific, which I couldn't even if I tried, a corn chips is not the same thing as a tortilla chip.
I've never tried the taco chips at Aldi Süd but I'd bet that they are what I'd call tortilla chips. Tortilla chips are what they serve at Mexican restaurants with salsa. And corn chips are....well, they're corn chips. Usually small strips, about 1 1/2 inches long, rectangular in shape. No, wait, they now have Frito curls and all sorts of shapes. All sorts of flavors, too. But the "old-fashioned" corn chips are rectangular.

Go to the FritoLay website and you'll see what I'm talking about:
www.fritolay.com

I love my corn chips with bean dip, but that's even more impossible to find than chocolate chips. Time to schedule another foodie trip back to the States!

@bahama mama
yes, sorry I meant tortilla chips.
Shame, I didn't try corn chips when I was in the States. Oh well, next time then!!

@cookie lover - eher das Gegenteil, ziemlich weich in der Mitte, ein bisschen "knatschig".

Corn Chips sind ziemlich hell, salzig, kein Paprika etc. Toller Geschmack. Taco Chips sind glaube ich prinzipiell auch Corn Chips aber mit anderen/mehr Gewürzen und in versch. Geschmacksrichtungen. Dippers. Toll!!!

@dj: Ahhhh! Ok, danke für die Aufklärung ;-) Ich dachte bei meinem Beitrag an die "amerikanischen" (?) Schokoladenkekse von Aldi-Süd, die dort unter dem Namen "New Orleans" verkauft werden - die sind nämlich recht mürbe (und lecker, IMHO).

I did a quick search and found a couple places where you can buy chocolate chips online. One of them has the genuine Nestle Toll House chips, in case you REALLY want to be authentic. :-) It's at:

http://www.mybrandsinc.com/ShopOnline/Catalog...

They're based in the US, but they said they will ship to international addresses - just call and they can give you the details about shipping method and cost and everything. If you click on the "Policies" link at the top of the page, they give you a phone number, or you could try e-mailing to customercare@mybrandsinc.com. It might be a good source for other hard-to-find foods from home.

A second place is a website that sells in bulk, www.bulkfoods.com. They apparently sell a lot to stores, so don't let shipping rates for quantities such as "1,000 lbs." (!) scare you off, they ship in quantities as small as 1 pound, apparently. They ship international orders via U.S.P.S. But they're not any specific brand, so you might not get chocolate chips as good as good as you're used to. I don't know, I've never ordered from them.

Of course, buying things like that and having them shipped overseas would probably be pretty expensive, but maybe it would be nice for a special treat...or you could share an order and split shipping with other homesick friends. Or hey, maybe friends or family that live at home could buy the non-perishable items you're craving and mail them over.

In terms of the cookies themselves, I've heard that butter alone makes cookies crunchy or crispy, vegetable shortening makes them softer and chewier. My good, old, tried-and-true Betty Crocker recipe uses half of each and that gives cookies that are bit crispy on the edges and soft and chewy in the middle, and without losing that buttery taste. Mmmmmm....I think it's time for lunch...:-)

Also, I bake all my cookies now on those Silpat baking mats. They're silicone with glass fiber or something woven into them. At any rate, nothing sticks to them, the cookies never burn or get too dark on the bottom, and they're reusable so you don't have to keep buying and throwing away parchment paper or scrubbing baking sheets.

Now I think I'll have to bake some cookies this weekend...

Sugar in the USA, brown or otherwise, is almost exclusively cane sugar which is mostly grown in Hawaii. (The USA has very strict restrictions on sugar imports to protect the American sugar growers.)

In Europe beet sugar is more common which is not surprising since sugar beets grows in the cooler climate there. (Protect the European sugar growers....)

This is important if you want to make receipts that use brown sugar. (I suspect that this why Coca Cola in Europe tastes more like cinnamon compared to the US.)


From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar#Cane_versu...:

“The residues of sugar production differ substantially and from place to place. While cane molasses can be used as an ingredient, molasses from sugar beet is unpalatable and generally used for industrial fermentation or as animal feedstuff. Both can be dried and burnt as fuel.”

If you want to make American specialties in Europe, you should use cane sugar, and if you want to make European specialties in the US then it would be a good idea to use beet sugar. This makes a big difference when dealing with brown sugar which contains a lot of molasses.

If you want to make American chocolate chip cookies in Europe use brown cane sugar and they will come out right. (I have done it in Ireland, where milk and eggs are at least the same as in the US, so I assume that things are more or less the same on the Lower Continent as well.)

I learned a lot of this from my college Economics professor in the US about 10 years ago who specialized in Agricultural Economics. She used to harp on the fact that the USA is the second most expensive producer of Sugar in the world next to France.

@John ("molasses from sugar beet is unpalatable") Can't confim that one. I LOVE sugar beet molasses on my toast for breakfast. See http://www.grafschafter.de/produkte/goldsaft.html

isn't Coke in the US made with corn syrup? I always thought that was where the difference in taste came from.

I agree with cookie lover - maybe the molasses tastes a little different because it contains only about 50 % sugar and there are enough additional things in there, but I'd say it's basically the same thing. (Hey, there is hardly anything with 50 % sugar in it that doesn't taste good, is there?)

Is shortening comparable to margarine? Of Palmin, maybe? Butterschmalz? I can never get that one right.

@cookie lover,
I agree that the statement "molasses from sugar beet is unpalatable" is an opinion and I think it should probably be rephrased in Wikipedia. The point is, that the two types of sugar taste completely different.

The link you provided is a Grafschafter advertisment for a sugar beet product which is being marketed in Europe by a European company for Europeans. One can hardly expect European sugar producers to badmouth their own heavily subsidized crop.

@John: ("The link you provided is a Grafschafter advertisment for a sugar beet product which is being marketed in Europe by a European company for Europeans. One can hardly expect European sugar producers to badmouth their own heavily subsidized crop.") Its not about badmouthing the European sugar industry or not, I gave you the link to the Grafschafter advertisment to show you what I was talking about when I said that I (and all of my family and quite a lot of my friends, too) love to eat sugar beet molasses for breakfast. The author of the Wikipedia article clearly doesn't know what he/she's talking about.

DJ,

I have a can of US Coke here. And here are the ingredients:

Carbonated Water, High Fructose, Corn Syrup, Caramel Color, Phosphoric Acid, Natural Flavors, Caffeine.

Can someone in Germany write out the ingredients of what it says there? It might be interesting. Does it say Maissirup?

@John: But the point is that many Germans love to eat the product - on toast, like cookie lover, or even on bread and cheese, so if this product is indeed sugar beet molasses it would seem a bit rude to say that "molasses from sugar beet is unpalatable" and can be used as an _animal_ feedstuff .

Zutaten: Wasser, Zucker, Kohlensäure, Lebensmittelfarbstoff E 150d (Zuckerkulör), Säuerungsmittel: E 338 (Phosphorsäure), Aroma, Aroma Koffein.

Oh, wait a minute, I think I can see where the misunderstanding about the molasses comes from. The sweet sugar cane sap, cane sugar (and before that: sugar cane mollases) is made from contains very little proteins and next to no fibres. In contrast, sugar beets are cooked to extract the sugar from them and the extract contains both, fibres and proteins that make the raw melasses quite slimy. However, these unwanted ingredients are removed during a purification process known as "Entschleimung" and the result is what I was referring to in my earlier posts.

make that "very few proteins"

That is interesting that the German Coca Cola leaves the corn syrup out! That would certainly make a difference in what a person would be used to. Here are the ingredients off a can of American Orange Fanta:

Carbonated water, High Fructose, Corn Syrup, Citric Acid, Sodium Benzoate(To protect taste), Modified Food Starch, Natural And Artificial Flavors, Sucrose Acetate Isobutyrate, Sodium Polyphosphates, Coconut Oil, Yellow 6, Brominated Vegetable Oil, , Ascorbic Acid, Red 40, Dioctyl Sodium Sulfosuccinate.

Hey, no caffeine!

@Cookie Lover and Dragon, I did not intend to criticize nor offend but rather point out that there are important differences and that they should be kept in mind or investigated if someone wants to duplicate something such as a recipe from a different country and have it turn out right. (By the way I am a terrible cook.)

dj: stimmt. Chemisch gesehen ist das Endprodukt das Gleiche: nämlich Sacharose, das aus einem Fruchzucker- und einem Traubenzuckermolekül besteht und die chemische Formel C12 H22 O11 hat. Der Geschmacksunterschied liegt an den zusätzlichen Bestandteilen des Zuckerrohr bzw. der Zuckerrüben.

Hi
Saw all the interest on Chocolate chips for cookies. Here in Germany you can get them from www.foodfromhome.de If you live in Dusseldorf they have a store also! But note I see on there website its shop-rite, but in the store its Hersheys!

me again
Sorry. The choc chips are in the website in Home Baking>other I just typed choc chip into their search box

Ja genau Reese's!!!! Die gab's vor Jahren mal ne Weile in Berlin in nem Laden von dem ich den Namen vergessen hab, aber dann auch nicht mehr. Die sind ja soooooooooooooooooo lecker.

@ dirk

"Brown Sugar" da must du schon Mike Jagger von den Rolling Stones fragen was er darunter versteht.
Ich glaube er meint Schokoladebraune Zuckersüse Frauen. :-)

@ Blub

Really? I always thought it was a reference to heroin.

Also, wenn ich amerikanische Cookies backe mische ich normalen weissen Zucker mit Melasse. Dann habe ich den Geschmack, der mir beim Backen mit deutschem braunen Zucker fehlt. Statt Melasse geht auch Zuckerrübensirup, aber Melasse schmeckt besser. Gibts auf jeden Fall im Reformhaus.

Ich hoffe, beim Überfliegen des Threads diesen Tip nicht übersehen zu haben.