East & Eden prepares oatmeal cookies with licorice

As an architect and interior designer, Ulla Skaaning Mathiesen decorated many boutiques and cafés. But finally, in 2017, she got to decorate her own. Five years after moving with her family to the German capital from Copenhagen, she took on a new project. East & Eden opened up in a former antiques shop. It sells Danish snacks and baked goods.

"The East & Eden name comes from the book by John Steinbeck, East of Eden. We had a whole list of names. One of them that we really liked was the East & Eden, because it contains the word east, East Berlin, and Eden as the nice place we wanted to make it. So we decided to twist it a little bit and call it East & Eden." - Ulla Skaaning Mathiesen

At East & Eden in Berlin's Mitte neighborhood, Ulla Skaaning Mathiesen offers a small selection - dishes which are easy and uncomplicated to prepare. That's typical of the Danes, she says. As a youth, she did an internship at a pastry shop - a passion which remained with her. She backs all of the sweets here herself - using her own recipes.

"I am lucky enough to have a dentist for a mother. Growing up in the 70s in Denmark, we were not allowed to eat candy or sugar on weekdays. We could only have it on Saturdays. My mother really wanted to encourage us to make food, I realized it was okay for me to bake a cake, and do that with sugar. So every day when I came home from school, I would bake something." - Ulla Skaaning Mathiesen

"Using licorice in recipes for me is like using a new spice. I do not even think about licorice when I am using it. It's more like using cinnamon or nutmeg or any other spice. It gives this really nice deep warm flavor. " - Ulla Skaaning Mathiesen