Edelweiss German Cafe & Bakery

This very well may be my favorite place in Tuscaloosa.
The pretzels are awesome!

From the Tuscaloosa News

Published Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Flavor of Germany
Restaurant owners like recipes from Germany

By Lucinda Coulter
Special to The Tuscaloosa News

TUSCALOOSA | When Chris Weidmann unlocks the Edelweiss coffee shop at 5:30 every morning, two clocks help her stay in synch braiding bread and punching cinnamon roll pastry.

Video at bottom of story

One large round clock set for German time reminds her of her mother, who lives in the small town of Neuhausen where Weidmann grew up, near the Black Forest. She uses the other, set for time in Tuscaloosa, to know when to expect breakfast customers and, in the afternoons, to drizzle icing over tiny pumpkin spice cakes.

Weidmann, 41, and colleague Ester Scheeff opened the shop in July as part of a longtime dream they have had of owning a restaurant. Born and reared only 10 miles apart, the two German women from Swabia in southern Germany love the simple culinary traditions of their homeland.

They first cooked and baked for their families and friends, many of whom are employed as their husbands are at Mercedes Benz U.S. International in Vance. They met one another two years ago as bakers at The Café, a European bakery that closed in February.

Now the entrepreneurs are expanding culinary choices in the coffee shop on Fourth Street in Tuscaloosa to include authentic dishes of the Black Forest. They added a lunch menu with bratwurst, salamis and German sandwiches on demand in the shop they named for the small, white flower that grows only in the Alps.

“It’s a dream come true for me to stay in America and open our own little place,” Weidmann said. “It is like cooking at home.”

For the two shop owners, long hours cooking, first at the restaurant and then fixing meals at home for their families, is a way of life.

“We did a lot of cooking,” Weidmann said of helping her mother prepare meals for the 12 children in her family. “She had to feed them all.”

Swabian dishes are home-style, made with fresh ingredients, and the vegetables, meats and fillings for pastries are easy to find. Potatoes and meat dishes with noodles or spaetzle are popular and bread is baked every day. The steps for pretzels or layered pastries cannot be rushed.

“It’s food that’s good, rich and plenty,” Weidmann said. “We only use normal ingredients that you’d have at home. We don’t use a lot of fru-fru.”

Breads, pretzels and Black Forest cakes

At the Edelweiss, Scheeff is known for the pretzels and breads she bakes, and Weidmann prepares the pastries, many of them in abundant layers of cake and cream or topped with honey and almond dressings.

The Black Forest cake that Weidmann has made since childhood is her most popular recipe and requires a lot of whipped cream – and time.

“It became my favorite because everybody wanted it,” Weidmann said. “You have to take two or three days, step by step.”

Other pastries she prepares include cinnamon rolls and variations with the basic pastry dough that include almond fillings and vanilla pudding. Weidmann refers to a popular braided breakfast bread as “an old German thing, like you braid your hair.”

Timing is key to all of the food preparation.

“We use no preservatives,” Weidmann said as she rolled out pastry dough and drizzled white sugar and cinnamon on top. “We make it fresh to be eaten that day or the next.”

Scheeff’s specialties are pretzels, bread and a mustard-based potato salad – all of which she learned to prepare from her mother and mother-in-law. With three grown children, she wanted to perfect her techniques for baking breads such as multi-grains and pumpkin seed recipes that friends requested.

“I baked bread every day when we moved to Tuscaloosa, and everybody liked my pretzels,” Scheeff said.

Weidmann said that one of the shop’s regular customers often orders a meal-sized bowl of the potato salad for lunch.

Scheeff uses no mayonnaise and instead combines oil, vinegar, vegetable broth, salt and pepper. The mustard is an important ingredient for the glossy dish, served hot or cold.

Weidmann and Scheef said that they have learned, gradually, to translate their metric measurements for ingredients to the English system. They also substitute ingredients that are difficult to order in America. Almonds are substituted for hazelnuts, for example. And the main ingredient for cheesecake in Germany is different from American sour cream.

Their spirit of trial-by-error has encouraged Gudrun Piepke, who serves and cooks at the Edelweiss.

The 45-year-old Piepke grew up near Heidelberg, Germany. She was an accountant and has been a Tuscaloosa resident for seven years. She cooks for her family but until she began working at the Edelweiss, had never baked pastries.

“You don’t have to be afraid of doing something,” she said. “I never thought you could get so much fun out of it.”

Swabian family meals

The two colleagues favor meat and dumpling dishes, referred to as schnitzel with spaetzle, for meals they prepare at home. Their homeland is a wine growing region, and to enhance meals, they serve a German wine, made with trollinger with lemberger grapes.

“Oh, that’s a wonderful wine,” Weidmann said. “It has nothing to do with drinking. It is just about enjoying a good meal and a good wine.”

She especially enjoys making maultaschen, a traditional Swabian dumpling filled with sausage, spinach or ground beef. She prepares the dish when her 80-year-old mother visits from Germany.

Both Weidmann’s and Scheeff’s children said they appreciate the German dishes such as schnitzels and cakes with whipped cream that their mothers prepare.

Maggie Weidmann, 14, said she looks forward to having her favorite, the Black Forest cake every year for her birthday and is proud of her mother for starting the restaurant.

Marcel Scheeff, 24, agreed.

He said that the strawberry and whipped cream cake Ester Scheef makes is delicious.

“It wasn’t unusual for us to have three cakes for one family birthday,” he said. “She’s always baked a lot. The Edelweiss is the perfect match for her.”

Like down home

Michael Holdefer and his daughter, Erin Holdefer Kightlinger, said that they eat breakfast at the Edelweiss almost every day because the food is fresh and delicious. The shop reminds them of the German food they enjoyed when the family’s twins, Erin and Lauren, trained in Hamburg before they participated in gymnastics at the University of Alabama.

“It’s like a down-home restaurant in a family atmosphere,” said 25-year-old Kightlinger, who works at her father’s business downtown.

“My favorite is the cheesy pretzel roll, and the sweets are not overwhelmingly sweet.”

German native Ilse Gerhardt walks into the small shop often to buy the crusty bread topped with sunflower seeds or pastry glazed with almonds and honey. A Tuscaloosa resident since 2005, she said that she enjoys choosing from a wide variety of breads, some made with potatoes and often with whole grains.

“It’s a piece of my home country when I walk into the Edelweiss,” Gerhardt said.

Reach Lucinda Coulter at coulterlucinda@aol.com or 205-394-0296.

BLACK FOREST CAKE

Cake base:

• 8 eggs
• 200 grams (7 ounces) sugar
• 200 grams (7 ounces) flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• Vanilla flavoring to taste
• 1 8-ounce found spring form pan

Filling:

• 650 grams (23 ounces) cherries in water, drained
• 100 grams (3.5 ounces) sugar
• 4 tablespoons cornstarch
• Rum flavoring
• Heavy whipping cream
• Chocolate flakes

Beat eggs with sugar and vanilla flavoring. Whisk sifted flour and baking powder together. Pour into greased pan. Bake at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for 40 minutes. Let pan cool. Divide cake base into 3 layers. Cook 2 cups juice form cherries with sugar and rum flavoring. When water is cooking, stir cornstarch in, lert thicken. Put cake ring around first cake layer and put cherries on the first layer. Refrigerate for 2 hours. Put second cake layer. Bat heavy whipping cream. Put 1/3 on cake base and then add last cake layer. Remove cake ring. Put whipped cream all around. Put chocolate flakes on the edges of the cake. Decorate top with cream and Maraschino cherries.


NUT CORNERS

Cake base:

• 150 grams (5 ounces) flour
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• 65 grams (2.2 ounces) sugar
• 1 package vanilla sugar
• 1 egg
• 65 grams (2.2 ounces) unsalted butter
• 2 tablespoons apricot jam

Knead all ingredients together. Roll dough out to a rectangle, 13 inches by 9 inches, and put on a greased baking sheet. Spread jam on crust. Set aside.

Topping:

• 100 grams (3.5 ounces) butter
• 100 grams (3.5 ounces) sugar
• 1 package vanilla sugar
• 2 tablespoons water
• 100 grams (3.5 ounces) water
• 100 grams (3.5 ounces) coconut

Cook all ingredients slowly together. Let cool. Spread topping onto crust. Bake at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 minutes. Let cool. Cut into triangles. Dip one corner into almond bark.


PEACH CREAM PIE

Cake crust:

• 250 grams (8 ounces) flour
• 175 grams (6 ounces) sugar
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 egg
• 125 grams (4.4 ounces) unsalted butter
• Spring form pan

Filling:

• 2 cans peaches or pears (reserve juice)
• 1 package vanilla pudding (not instant)
• 3 eggs
• 100 grams (3.5 ounces) sugar
• 250 grams (8 ounces) sour cream

Mix all ingredients for crust on working space by hand. Knead it together. Refrigerate cake crust for 1 hour. Mix ¼ cup juice with vanilla pudding powder and 1 tablespoon sugar. Set aside. Cook 2 cups juice until it boils and stir mixture in. Let boil for 2 minutes, constantly stirring. Put crust in round cake pan. Layer peaches on and then add cooked vanilla pudding. Bake at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for 40 minutes.

Topping:
Separate eggs and beat egg whites until stiff. Set aside. Then beat egg yolks with sugar until foamy. Whisk sour cream and egg whites into the mixture. Spoon onto baked cake and bake for another 15 minutes. Let cool.