Despite the smallness of the kitchen in our rented apartment here in Berlin, I still find comfort in spending time cooking and baking. The "kitchen" used to be a hallway and I am seeing that it's not impossible to turn out a meal in even the smallest of kitchens. That said, it works for a short time but I think I'd go crazy if that was the size of my kitchen for longer than a month.

Before baking a cake and cooking beluga lentils with rice for lunch , I spent some time at the Hugeldubel bookstore in the baking/cooking section. Germany seems not to have caught up with the cookbook craze in America. Hardly one wall is devoted to cookbooks.

Today's baking challenge was a rustic banana cake. I wrote up the recipe during my morning cappuccino. I had two very ripe bananas sitting on the counter and needed to use them before they were unusable. Unfortunately, it turned out that only one and a bit of the other was still usable, but the weight of the mashed bananas turned out to be perfect.

I love the results of using baker's percentages and formulas. So far, the three cakes I've made have turned out better than expected. Besides the temperature being a bit high, the cake was awesome. I'm looking forward to having another slice tomorrow for breakfast.

The children spent time with Oma at the playground across the street. My husband and I went to buy a crate of sparkling water and some beer.

I did manage to buy a baking book during my second visit to the store later in the evening when I went with my husband. That's when the hailstorm hit, bringing back memories of the damaging hailstorm back in Texas years ago.