So...did I go over the troll bridge and through the dancing forest to get to Chinchilla Mountain? No!
Did I rescue the red ring, teach the giant rocks to sing and turn winter into spring?? No!
While the above Dora adventures are indeed cause for celebration, what I accomplished was much more challenging: I actually baked a cake in France.
Cake mixes here are not like they are in the rest of the world. There's no such thing as "add an egg and a cup of water and bake for 25 minutes," oh no siree! They require lots of whipping, beatering, many eggs and this thing called CREAM.
In a country that produces over 1000 different kinds of cheese, where housewives learn to make their own butter even if they don't live on a farm, and where people cram themselves into tiny, stacked houses in walled cities in order to leave rolling countryside free for grazing cows, it's no surprise that there are MANY different kinds of cream to choose from when baking a cake. One must choose the correct consistency, keep it at the proper temperature and measure it in centilitres. Yes...cl!
My first attempt flopped. It was for Annabeth's birthday and it came out several centimetres lower than the picture on the box. (Now there's a good use for the prefix centi-).
Anyway, my cake was even more compact than the one Trevor had made for Annabeth the week prior. His was about as high as a double-stacked box of chocolates. Mine was more like a Frisbee. His was at least somewhat edible, with its icing-from-a-bag. Mine was the disgrace of our entire family for generations to come, according to our landlady.
But yesterday, in honour of a family tradition called Grandparents Day where we celebrate the birthdays of all our Grandmas and Grandpas and Nonas and Nonos all on the same day every November, I tackled that darn French cake mix, I beat the hell out of the right style, shape and colour of 20 cl of light cream, I added three eggs, I divided the batter into thirds and mixed cocoa into some of it until it was "sombre," I re-combined the thirds with appropriate swirling action and the addition of a spoonful of icing sugar from a tiny packet -- the only icing sugar I have ever seen in this country -- and set the still-mysterious convection oven knobs to 150C. Forty-five minutes later....voila!
Actually, not quite voila. The cake rose up like a pointy dome; gravity is not strong enough to pull French cake batter into an even consistency throughout the cake pan. It was so high that the top started to burn around 35 minutes, and I had to take it out early. Then it dropped to about half its height.
But still! It turned out fluffy and light and tasty and I am very proud.
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| Good height |
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| Just the tiniest dusting of icing sugar -- wouldn't want to spoil things by tasting too MUCH icing sugar |
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| Appropriate swirl |
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| One of the more than 1000 cheese produced in this country |
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| Delicious cookies made of real ingredients, like CREAM... |
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| Sandy gets a haircut, and they add CREAM conditioner |
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| Prince Harry is soooo dreamy! I mean CREAMY! |
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| First frozen-milkfall. Shawn and Annabeth build the Eiffel Tower with cheese. THIS JUST IN: Need to make a gingerbread house before Don and Diannne arrive tomorrow. Gingerbread kit from store has no icing. Gives instructions how to make your own: "Get an adult's help to whip an egg white until it is stiff. Then add icing sugar little by little, still whipping, with some cream, fresh from a cow, or some goat cheese. Why not churn your own butter while you're at it. What the-hell ever! It's France." |
