Having the Cake and Eating It

Vowing never to post any "personal" photos anymore after this, but my neighbor Terri made and brought me this birthday cake, chocolate pound cake with buttercream frosting, carefully piped bit by bit maybe 1000 times, for the most realistic bunbun I ever ate. We enjoyed slices of its butt with tea while Terri, an artist, explained that she once was a professional cake-maker, creating huge and ornate holiday and wedding cakes to order. Terri took this photo, too.

Notice that the bunbun sits on its plate among green buttercream grass featuring tiny forget-me-not flowers. Nobody ever made me a cake like this in my entire life. We had lunch at the Roemer Topf in Mascoutah, Illinois, that day, one of the best German restaurants I've ever dined at, serving schnitzel, spaetzle topped with swiss-type cheese, mushroom sauce, smoked pork chops, pea soup, bock beer (for me), Bavarian Gemutlichkeit and everything. Eastern Missouri now appears to be void of such places; not even Hermann has a thoroughly German restaurant anymore. Must go to Illinois, and I totally recommend the Roemer Topf.

Can't help loving German food. Terri grew up with a genuine Oma and Opa. I grew up among European refugees including German women who married Slavs after the war and came to the U.S. Those ladies served that Kartoffeln und Sauerbraten und wurst und strudeln and you name it and we first-generation Americans ate it up like a hundred yards of chitlins. (A "Roemer Topf" is a covered clay cooking dish. There's one sitting on the bar at the Roemer Topf.)