Sunday, June 28, 2009-Cooking a cake for Pabla’s Birthday

Monday, June 29, 2009 was one of our language instructor’s, Pabla, birthday. So our group decided to make a cake to bring to give to her to celebrate. A week or two earlier our Medical Officer, Mary, made these incredible zucchini muffins. We knew we wouldn’t be able to find a cupcake pan,but the recipe should function fine as a cake. We decided to meet at Shavonda’s house on Sunday to cook. Unfortunately when Sunday came around, Shavonda realized that there was some tension between her host parents, and that bringing a bunch of gringos over probably wouldn’t be a good idea. So Carrie, Jenna, and I decided to go to Carrie’s house to cook. We asked her sisters what they already had in the house so that we could go buy the missing ingredients. Unfortunately we forgot that pretty much everything is closed on Sundays after noon, and we started looking for the missing ingredients(cocoa powder, a bar of chocolate, zucchini/carrots, nuts) around 3pmish. After going to 3 closed dispensas (corner stores usually run out of a house), we found 2 that were open and purchased the carrots, some chocolate mix powder, and some oreolike cookies. When we got home we realized that the host family didn’t have all of the items we thought they had at first and so a few more emergency substitutions had to be made…

Original Recipe
½ c butter
½ cup vegetable oil
1 ¾ c sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
½ c milk mixed with ¼ tsp white vinegar
2 ½ c flour
4 T unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
½ t cinnamon
½ t salt
2 c grated zucchini
1 c chopped chocolate/ chocolate chips

Our Version
½ c butter => 1 banana
½ cup vegetable oil
1 ¾ c sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
½ c milk mixed with ¼ tsp white vinegar =>milk and lemon juice (omit vinegar)
2 ½ c flour
4 T unsweetened cocoa powder => 5 T chocolate milk powder
1 tsp baking powder => omitted
½ t cinnamon => omitted
½ t salt
2 c grated zucchini => 2c grated carrots
*Oh and all of the measurements were a guesstimate because I didn’t have a measuring cup…and another note… Microsoft word recognizes ‘guesstimate’ as an actual word…awesome
1 c chopped chocolate/ chocolate chips => crumbled cookie soaked in chocolate milk, which then became very mushy when Jenna mixed it together and became a thick pudding like substance. Pro-added chocolate flavor; Con-didn’t taste like or act like chocolate chips.

Final result…
A very very dense carrot cake with a hint of chocolate flavor. Definitely eatable, but not something I would make again.

Shavonda also ended up making 2 ‘cakes’ too. Funny though her banana bread and a chocolate chip cakeish dessert both had the same basic consistency as our chocolate ‘cake.’ Her’s were a little lighter and had a better flavor, but it was the same basic thing…and she used baking powder. I don’t know what happened, but I’m going to have to do a lot better preparation the next time I try to bake something.

We did give the cakes to Pabla, candles and all. We even sang to her in Spanish and Guarani. And by the end of the day the ‘cakes’ which we had cut into brownie size pieces, were all gone. Though we’ll eat pretty much anything right now, so that isn’t saying much. I pointed out to Aurelio, the other language teacher, that the cakes we made, in spite of their texture similarity, are actually nothing like the cakes we cook in the US.

Oh well, it’s the thought that counts right.