Geschmack: Amerikaner aka The Black and White Cookie

Germans may not get Seinfeld, but they do get the Black and White Cookie, known here as the Amerikaner. If the Black & White Cookie is all about racial harmony, the Germans are making a pretty clear statement with their baked goods.  It is also widely available in the segregated all black or all white version.

Having first discovered that I could get the Black and White Cookie here, around the corner, in Germany, I took the literal, typical, unfamiliar-immigrant approach and called it the "Schwarz und Weiß Keks."   Nobody let me know I had it all wrong, possibly because they wanted to avoid the 30 seconds of uncontrollable mirth that now happens every time I ask for an Amerikaner.  Each time that word comes out of my mouth it's like I have fulfilled for the bakery staff all of the stereotypes about Americans in that one brief moment of ordering a baked good.  Next time I should add one of the terrible, heavy, thick-as-mud doughnuts they call American-style to my order and the staff can die and go to heaven.  Man, can't we all just get along?  Look to the cookie!