Coffee and cake...and then more coffee

I have to make this quick, because I have been kind of swamped with my writing schedule.  I have a chapter due on Friday and am nowhere near where I should be right now, so I am feeling a bit stressed about getting it done. 
Let me take a nice, relaxing moment to reminisce about the latté and apple pie I had just a week ago.  The pie, known as appeltaart here, is really kind of a cross between a cake and a pie.  There's a thin crust on the bottom, but the filling has enough flour in it to keep the apple slices from falling all over the place.  There are about a billion places in Amsterdam to get this national treasure, and I knew a Canadian ex-pat in one of my Dutch classes determined to try them all.  Her knowledge of appeltaart haunts was astounding and kind of scary.  This is the piece I shared with a friend in a cafe on a sleepy street in the center of Amsterdam. 

And just for comparison's sake, here is a picture of the appeltaart Regan and I split this past summer when she came for a visit:

That one had a thicker top crust and came with cinnamon ice cream, which was pretty awesome on a hot, August day.  I've never attempted to make it myself at home, mostly because the ones I order in the cafés are so good.  Maybe I should try a recipe, you know, with all that free time I've got on my hands.

And just a quick note on the beverage, the one I love probably too much.  Americans call it a latté, but the Dutch call it a koffie verkeerd.  You can also order a latté here, but you have to say [láh tuh] and not [lah tey] or the waitress will instantly know you are American and switch the conversation into English even if every other word you have said has been in grammatically correct and perfectly pronounced Dutch.  Just a heads up.  I usually say koffie verkeerd, because it means "messed-up" coffee, and I think it's a cute description.  A regular coffee is black and the "incorrect" one has a bunch of milk in it. 

So now I'm going to go make myself a coffee and get to my work writing.  As much fun as writing a blog post can be, I can't send it to my advisor as part of a chapter section.