This past Saturday my friends Kevin and Tracie held their annual Oktoberfest party. They supply a keg of German beer and everyone brings some delicious German (or fall) inspired treats to share. Even though they request that people indicate on the evite what they are bringing so there’s not too much of any one thing, there was a bit of fail this year in that almost everyone brought dessert including me. I stand by my decision in that I was the first one to say I was bringing a dessert. Everyone else just didn’t pay attention or didn’t care that there were going to be 10 desserts. This is how I pretty much ate nothing but sausage and sugar in various forms on Saturday.

I decided to try my hand at baking a Bienenstich, also known as a Bee Sting Cake presumably because of the honey found in the topping. It’s a yeasted cake topped with a caramelized almond topping and a pastry cream in the middle. It’s a bit time consuming to make given all the parts and the fact that the cake dough has to rise twice. I used this recipe from The Smitten Kitchen, mostly anyway. I had a fail with my first attempt at making the pastry cream. I’m pretty sure it’s my fault and that I cooked it too long turning it into a gelatinous mass instead of an actual cream. For my second go I decided to use a slightly different recipe for the cream just in case it was the recipe and not my cooking skills that were amiss. I’ve never had any problems with a Smitten Kitchen recipe before so I’m guessing it was me, but I didn’t want to have to make the cream a third time. I was successful on my second go around and the cake was a big hit.

My friend Alison and I decided that Kevin and Tracie’s daughter Abby needed her own stein for her very first Oktoberfest. She was less than impressed.

Having friends that live out in the pseudo-country now also means activities like archery and tractor rides.

Derek tried his hand (mouth) at drinking out of a real glass for the first time helping himself to some of his dad’s water. He wasn’t really sure what to make of the water once he got in there.

As is often the case when the weather is nice enough we ended the party sitting around the fire pit. At some point over the summer someone on Twitter mentioned S’moreos, which if you can’t figure it out from the name are s’mores made with Oreos instead of graham crackers. That sounded like a delicious creation to me and thus I brought some Oreos to try it out. It was indeed extremely delicious. Know what’s better than an Oreo? An Oreo with a fire-toasted marshmallow smashed in the middle of it. I didn’t bother putting chocolate on mine thinking the chocolate cookie in the Oreo would suffice. Someone who tried it both ways reported that the chocolate didn’t really add anything as I suspected. Either way it’s delicious and I recommend trying it.

The fire pit itself is a little store bought one they had in their old more suburban house. Now that they have much more land I think it’s time for an upgrade. On our drive home we noticed one of their neighbors on the next cross street had a huge bonfire sized fire pit going. I demand a bigger and better fire pit! Now I will just wait for Kevin to tell me he needs me to buy a 3-D printer first to make one, though I’m pretty sure you can’t make an effective fire pit out of a 3-D printer.