Welcome to Food with Alessia! Alessia and I are students in Maastricht in the Netherlands. I am both German and Dutch, and I know the cultures, and I am in “familiar territory” so to say. Alessia is from Italy, and just moved to Maastricht. So in these blogs and videos, we have food that is part and parcel of the Dutch culture. Alessia is the judge: does she like these foreign delicacies? On the Dutch blog, we have already tried quite some dishes. Check those out!

Now, we want to bring this concept to the German blog. Are you ready?

In this first tasting, I chose something that we neither have to bake or cook. All it has to do is cool down: Kalter Hund! (Cold dog – hedgehog slice). It consists of layered biscuits, glued together with chocolate. Yes, it is as lecker as it sounds. Check out what Alessia thought here:

Origin

The name of this sweet chocolaty delight may be the thing that baffles you most. Sure, it is kalt. But Hund? Dog? Really? No.

Hund comes from the word Grubenhunte, which is the mining cart used in mines. It is also referred to as Hunt or Hund. These black, rectangular trolleys look a lot like the dark chocolate mess that we made here.

Other terms for Kalter Hund include for example the simple Kekskuchen (biscuit cake), or Kalte Schnauze (cold snout). This is the term for it that I grew up with. I never knew what this name referred to, but apparently the top of the Kalter Hund feels like the wet snout of a dog. Yes! The dog is still in the story!

Kalter Hund is very easy to make. All you need is biscuits, chocolate, and a fridge. Basically. We decided to make the chocolate ourselves, because it (probably) tastes better! We used coconut oil instead of butter or other vegetable oil. Coconut oil has its own distinct taste. You might like It, you might not. The great advantage of coconut oil is that it hardens again after it melted. This way, the Kalter Hund will be just great when you get it out of the fridge. In fact, we noticed that the coconut oil started hardening already when we spread it over the biscuits.

All you need:

A package of tea biscuits (if you do not have the rectangular ones, you can also crumble them and mix that with the chocolate “dough”);

Coconut oil;

Cocoa;

Powdered Sugar and vanilla sugar;

Eggs.

You melt the oil, mix the rest first and then add the oil, mix again, and you have your chocolate “dough”! You lay down the cookies, spread the dough, add another layer, etc. until you are done. Put it all in the fridge for some hours and you are done.

Guten Appetit!