Have I mentioned that some of my favorite blogs are in French? Le Pétrin, Bombance, …au levain! and Makanai are some fantastic francophones that you must check out if you don’t know them.
You don’t speak French? No problem, neither do I, really. Oh, my high-school French serves in a pinch and yours probably does too, but why knock ourselves out when Google Translate is such an able servant? Thanks to this tireless polyglot-bot, a mouse click gets you the translation of any text or web page in any of 45 languages.
This came in very handy the other week when I spotted Sandra’s dazzling and decadent chocolate salami and had to have it. Feeling lazy, I called upon our trusty GT to produce the English translation of the recipe, and commenced reading through the ingredient list:
- 200g dark chocolate 70%. Check. I actually had exactly this amount left over from my Christmas baking. Sitting untouched for over a week in my cupboard. I amaze myself sometimes.
- 100g butter. Check.
- 2 egg yolks, extra costs. I checked the fridge. Yes, my eggs were from Whole Foods, and those are more expensive than Safeway eggs. So I was good on the pricey egg yolks.
- 2 tablespoons Amaretto. Check. (In the end I only used one tbsp.)
- 2 pinches of dried chili flakes. Check.
- 8 grandchildren butter (80g). What?
Oh, I get it! Doing the math, I see that one grandchild is 10 grams, so grandchild must be the quaint French term for a pat of butter. And they must call a stick of butter a child of butter, and a kilo would be the grandparent of butter. Those French, so cute!
Just to be sure, I Googled “petits-beurre,” the ingredient in Sandra’s original French recipe. Oh. It’s a kind of cookie. OK then. Google, will you please inform Google Translate of this? (And while you’re at it, please tell GT that instructing me to pour water into a shop vacuum fried in the oven when baking MC’s Couronne Nantucket is not likely to produce the desired result. Can we use some common sense here?)
So, butter cookies. I had none of those, petit or otherwise. I did, however, have some leftover panettone that I figured I’d slice up and stick in a low oven until bone-dry. It ended up working pretty well. Next time I might include real grandchildren, just to see how that affects the flavor profile.
- 7 biscuits (40g). I didn’t have any biscuits either. Plenty of panettone, though.
- A mixture of 40g blanched almonds, hazelnuts, pine nuts. Check, except for the hazelnuts. And why not use 40g each of almonds and pine nuts, just because?
- 1-2 tbsp icing sugar for coating. Check.
Sandra can tell you how to turn all this stuff into a salami. I’ll just be here making sure no one tries to make my kids into sausage, and saving up to buy more eggs.
Now I’m ROTFLOL!!! I swear all my kids are safe: never made them into salami, never even bite one of them!!
BTW, what GT translates as biscuits are in fact ladyfingers!!! Now that I’m thinking of it, I’m not sure that a sausage made with grandchildren and ladyfingers sounds very appealing to your readers!!
Thank you for a big laugh: I love you!
hahahahaha I’m laughing so hard! I love google translate…. so funny! Thanks for the entertaining study break 🙂
The grandchild story gave me visions of Hansel and Gretel, with the child-eating witch! Your “salami” looks delicious.
Hi Susan,
Happy New Year, if a bit belated perhaps.
What a great post, I laughed out loud and then ended up playing with the GT for an hour. The “extra costs” and “grandchildren” appeared in German, Swedish and Bulgarian too. I did attempt to read the post itself in the various languages, but my head kept spinning all the time.
The chocolate sausage really looks delicious, however, I’ll have to wait some time before I try it out, it’s January and healthy eating time. Most definitely, as most of my clothes feel a bit tight after the holidays.
Intriguing idea though, to use the GT for recipes, maybe that would be a thing to try out? Pick a recipe in a foreign language and see what you get in English, then cook/bake it (keeping within the law of course).
Still, thanks for a great post and a great recipe,
Carmella
This is a great post! Grandchildren butter…that’s too adorable. Brilliant us of technology to make something that looks simply delicious!!
Next time I venture into your blogosphere I will most assuredly be leaving (what else?) bread crumbs to make sure I can safely find my way out. It will be a challenge, when I’m paralyzed with laughter….
Ha ha ha too funny! I use Google Translate to tackle recipes in a foreign language too, but have never come across grandchildren butter (maybe the recipes I’ve been looking at are “kid-friendly.” Alright, I’ll stop there. :D).
I think “2 jaunes d’œuf extra-frais” means two extra fresh egg yolks. I vaguely recall frais meaning fresh.
Yum, that looks good.
Just to help out on the translating part. A petit-beurre is actually a type of cookies made by Lu. You might have seen Le Petit Ecolier, or Pim’s at your local store also made by Lu. Petit-beurre shouldn’t be far. I guess super toasted panetone works too :o)
Oh and “2 egg yolks, extra costs”?? How did Google translate fresh into cost, I don’t get!
Susan this post made this old woman laugh more than she has in ages. It reminded me of my attempt to get a recipe for poppyseed cake from Chocolate and Zucchini translated into English from French – it was so garbled that I just gave up.
Love your blog and while breadbaking is not one of the things I can do any more, reading about it and looking at the marvellous results of the talented bakers is almost but not quite enough to satisfy me. Thank much for the pleasure I get and another belated Happy New Year to you and yours.
Giggle! That is too funny. I’ll have to play around with that and see what I can find! The chocolate salami looks wonderful and so unique.
Chocolate Salami… there’s a Neapolitan version of this (which makes sense given the French influence on Napolitan cooking). We haven’t made this in years, guess it’s time to pull out that recipe. Happy New Year, and thanks for a great laugh this AM.
First, hysterical! Second, hooray for not dieting in January–I MUST make this. Third, do you buy pasteurized eggs or just trust the egg yolks? Or did you heat them at all? I swear I would not be such a wuss if I didn’t have small kids….
Oh translation is always a fun game. Theoretically I’m fluent in Russian, but I still sometimes find myself looking at Russian cookbooks and thinking “What in hell could that be?!” Hooray for you for jumping into the pool!
Susan, you are a riot! I loved this post. Thanks for the Bombance plug…
Thanks for the giggles, Susan!
My grandchildren are hiding….
looks delicious – even without grandchildren – sounds a bit like our hedgehog slice but I love it as a salami
Really great, Susan! I have started following a couple of French blogs (I actually do speak French) so this really had me laughing. Translating can lead to some very funny and unusual results = ‘grandchildren butter.’ The end result looks exactly a salami. Brava!
Delish! I made chocolate salami a couple of months ago, with dried fig and rice krispies. Yum.
Susan, thanks SO much for that lovely funny post!
I’ve read yesterday to my kids a story about hundreds of chicks who work hard (10 days) to bake an absolutely perfect “castle” (“château”, in French, instead of “gâteau”, which means cake) for Anne Hiversère (as if someone was called something like “Berth Day”), and we laughed a lot. Imagine if someone wanted to translate that book via Google, would’nt that be hilarious? 🙂
(and I’m much honored to be mentioned in one of your posts!)
Thanks!
Too funny…
by the way, thank you for turning me on to yet another WONDERFUL blog!
Kudos 🙂
chocolate salami? count me in, please!
I was reading a french website the other day and and the GT had translated baguette into “drumstick”.
What a great post, I laughed out loud and then ended up playing with the GT for an hour. The “extra costs” and “grandchildren” appeared in German, Swedish and Bulgarian too. I did attempt to read the post itself in the various languages, but my head kept spinning all the time.
Very fun post, Susan! This marks the third chocolate salami recipe I’ve come across; it’s making the short list, to be prepared soon. Love the looks of this one, and a very entertaining read too.
The post is delightful! It makes me laughing all the time while reading!
Like Tracy the grandchildren make me think of “Hänsel und Gretel”!
Because I never learned french (why are there no blogs in latein by the way) I use google translator a lot. It teach me already the most common words in recipes like levure, farine, sucre, ouef. I never thought that I would try to learn french because of recipes 😀
That looks great, I’,m from Ukraine and we grew up eating this, we called it sweet kielbasa, here in us we always make them with the animal crackers, and walnuts, they taste great.
That’s so funny !
Grandchildren butter…
hi there.
funny post. salame di cioccolata is a traditional italian pud there are countless versions of. basically it is a uncooked-refrigerated torte/tourte. in you like italian food there is an excellent version in elizabeth david’s italian food (1953) / a classic you must have if u l like italian food. If u r interested I can write her recipe down for u and post it.
excellent blog. ciao from milano
stefano arturi
Now I know what to do when I need a good laugh! I followed your link to Sandra’s website and translated her recipe for apple streusel. This is what it said: “30 minutes or until a wooden stick stung in the heart of the cake comes out dry”! (Must be a vampire cake).
I made this for my kids last weekend – I have been meaning to get back here and say thanks. I ended up making it twice. Mainly because my wife and I ate most of the first batch. needless to say they went nuts for it.
I love your Blog, and it inspires and amuses me in equal measure whenever I read it.
Thanks!
As a new foodie blogger, I always looking for unique things to try. I am going to attempt this chocolate salami recipe. I don’t know how it will tiur out but just reading your presentation will make it all worthwhile. Very funny, thanks.