German

It's not Oktoberfest without a soft pretzel—and once you've made a traditional German-style one from scratch, you'll never settle for those beer hall imposters again.

When I was a kid growing up in the Midwest, my friends and I would always pick up big packages of bratwurst to grill while watching sporting events. I wanted to re-create the sausage of my youth, and I think these bratwurst come pretty close. This is a simple, classic sausage; serve it on a crunchy roll with mustard and sauerkraut.

Cabbage is perfect for fermenting because the cell walls are easily broken down with salt, and the juices that are released quite easily make the brine. While you are chopping and grating your cabbage, eat a piece raw. It will be crunchy and sweet. After fermentation it will be pretty crunchy still, shiny and alive-looking; the sugars will have been eaten by the lactobacillus bacteria (et al); and the sauer that you taste is the lactic acid cleverly produced by the lactobacillus.

Make this traditional German Kranzkuchen for a festive sweet treat to serve on Christmas morning.

For a German apple cake full of sweet, tart flavor, cookbook author Luisa Weiss swaps out raisins for fresh cranberries and skips the sugar in the filling.

I like to make a batch of Lebkuchen Spice Mix—a mixture of all the “usual suspects” in wintertime baking—in early fall so that I’m ready for the Christmas baking season. The mixture below is a great all-purpose one. But you can also tinker with the amounts if you want to highlight one flavor or another.

Making Stollen is not for the faint of heart. Avoiding it altogether because excellent store-bought Stollen abounds is further abetted by the invention of Stollenkonfekt, bite-size chunks of spiced, tender Quark dough studded with almonds and raisins and thickly cloaked in vanilla-scented confectioners’ sugar. They may be a relatively recent development in the world of Christstollen, which dates back to the Middle Ages, but they more than make up for their youth. In other words, want the rich, buttery, spicy flavor of Stollen without the work of a yeasted dough and the weeks of impatiently waiting for the loaves to be ready? If so, Stollenkonfekt is the thing for you.

I like spreading Quark on my morning slice of bread and topping it with jam, but you can also mix it with salt and herbs and dollop it next to boiled potatoes for a light meal. Using buttermilk will result in skim Quark, which is best for baking recipes. If you want a creamier Quark to eat as is, simply stir a little heavy cream into the Quark to loosen and enrich it. (Mixed with high-quality fruit preserves, this makes for a luxurious little snack.)

Krapfen These light doughnuts will be the hit of any autumn or winter brunch. The recipe doubles easily for a crowd.

Don't forget to use the $10 kitchen tool that will make clean-up from this fragrant fried chicken a cinch.

We doubt you'll have any leftovers from this homey blueberry cake crowned by a buttery, brown-sugar-sweetened streusel topping, but if you do, it will make a fabulous companion to your morning coffee.

My dad grew up in the Bronx of the 1920s and was very fond of the yeasty crumb cakes found in many German-Jewish bakeries there. He calls the moist, tender cakes "crumb buns" and loves to eat them with a cup of coffee.