I Can Bake a Cake and Eat it to!

March 6^th, 2012

So many volunteers decided to invest in a mini oven with a stovetop.  I haven’t as I’m not much of a baker to begin with and with the whole gluten free issue there aren’t many options of things to bake.  However, I was sent some g-free all-purpose flour and my Make (host mom) just so happened to borrow our neighbors oven that a past volunteer left them.  Two days ago I went into the house and said “Make I want to bake something sweet.”  She just looked at me and held up her dessert cookbook, we were on the same page evidently.   So we decided to try out one of my recipes from my PC cookbook.  We baked a coffee cake, and get this friends, it actually turned out looking and tasting like a cake.  Can you believe I baked a cake made from scratch?  Not only did I bake a cake from starch but I also made frosting from scratch to go with it!  Granted my Make, who worked at the one coffee shop/bakery in Manzini (my shopping town), helped me, but still this is a miracle.  Many of you know of my past baking struggles and failures.  I always would resort to boxed cake and frozen cookies.

So g-free flour works fairly well.  The cake is crumbly as is to be expected but tastes like real cake and after not having cake for 9 months it was heavenly.  It wasn’t intentional but this cake could have been baked in celebration of having been in Peace Corps for exactly 9 months now!  We actually had really cool weather today also, around 27C, so it felt good to heat up the oven and get the whole kitchen smelling delicious.  The cake was cooled, frosted, and ready to eat just in time for everyone to come into the house to watch Generations.  Nothing makes a day great like dessert!