Baking Abroad

In Brazil last summer, I made Pepe his first "real" birthday cake.  Real as in handmade, with an added dose of affection.  Granted, baking abroad is rough.  What I consider basics--baking soda, baking powder, a normal sized bag of powdered sugar-- simply don't exist.

My cake beautifying skills are somewhat lacking.  It tasted good though!

I already have a list of the necessities I'll need this summer, when  I go back.  English measuring cups are the most important.  In Paris, I took up cookie making.  The New York Times BEST chocolate chip cookie recipe, to be exact.  I loved the recipe so much, I converted it in it's entirety to the metric system, at which point it looked somewhat like this...

How You Bake: A Story

The hummus and pesto at left were not added to the cookies...

Recipe: 7.14 grams baking soda, 7.14 grams baking powder... but wait, baking powder doesn't exist here.  Frantically search for a substitute, after spending over an hour at Monoprix scouring the aisles.  Learn that baking powder causes baking soda to react, therefore rise.  That the latter can be activated by yogurt, or lemon juice.  Try the former, settle for lemon juice because bubbly yogurt looks disgusting.  Save the converted recipe for next time.



Only next time you're in Italy, in the new apartment without internet.  You've managed to find dual metric/English measuring cups, but you only have the converted recipe.  You try pouring 233.33 grams of flour, then turning the cup around, to approximate.  It doesn't match up.  Somehow, the cookies still turn out.

You then become the designated baker, leaving Tupperware full of preformed cookie balls in your wake.  For Christmas, you make pie.  Only Italy lacks canned cherries, the main ingredient to your specialty.  They also lack fresh cherries.  So you decide to make apple pie, without a recipe at first, because you were going to make cherry pie. 

After peeling, coring, and slicing eight apples, you finally decide to look at a recipe.  It calls for 12 apples.  You think that's a lot, but send your boyfriend out for more anyway.  You season them all up, then try shoving 12 apples into a non-deep dish pie plate.  It doesn't work, per se.  But you sent him out in the cold.  You have to use all the apples.  Instead of a pie, you make an apple pyramid.

The End.

My baking adventures are at their usual university-standstill.  Until summer.  Then, with my suitcase full of baking equipment in tow, I'll take Brazil by cookie (and pie, and maybe cake).