Advertisement
Published: October 27th 2005
Edit Blog Post
Disaster Strikes!
Chantelle and I react to our puddle of a cake. Katie and I decided to make pumpkin cake with chocolate chips in it some time ago to celebrate fall. The Parisians just haven’t discovered the joys of pumpkin croissants here yet! And until they do, let me just warn you that you must go forth into the great metropolis with a strong will and a good friend if you are to succeed in making that oh-so-coveted favorite fall treat of pumpkin cake.
Well, the journey began last Tuesday, the one day that both Katie and I have no school. We brought our formidable list of ingredients translated from English into French to the local grocery store, but unfortunately they did not carry pumpkin, baking soda, or baking powder, so we hiked to the much larger grocery store near by with all of our bags. There, we studied the racks of foodstuffs, but couldn’t find anything resembling our three missing ingredients. Try as he might, the bag boy could not make heads or tails of what our word for baking soda meant, and he gave a definitive negative on the pumpkin and baking powder. Finally as we were checking out the bag boy ran up with a large can of baking
powder!! But since we still lacked the pivotal pumpkin product, Katie and I decided to postpone our baking until the next Tuesday.
Flash forward to this Tuesday ; we decided to hit the Galleries Lafayette because they have everything imaginable there, little knowing what a zoo of commercialism we were subjecting ourselves to! I can see how certain parts of Paris can really make a person sick because they are so crowded and commercial. I could barely register all the images I was seeing, so many clothes, shoes, accessories, and foods that my head was spinning (this is all very bad when you love to shop like me and flit from one shiny object to the next - I really didn’t know where to put my eyes, and at one point found myself registering not the WOMAN in front of me but the SHIRT that she wore as if I wanted to buy it, and that is when I realized I had to leave as soon as possible). Well, they had everything BUT pumpkin and baking soda so we left and went to the Bon Marché; another store which has all sorts of really expensive fun foods, and most importantly foreign foods. There we FINALLY we found what we needed - and it was only by a stroke of luck.
Making the cake was a whole other ordeal due to the type of ovens they often use here in France. They have combination oven / microwaves here that cook anything from coffee to a turkey which work totally differently than the ovens in the US. I have such a beast at Denis’ place, and every single time I use it I get out the manual and try to decipher yet again the directions in French.
Our cake seemed to be doing well we realized that the top of it was burning, but it seemed to be done, and no real harm was done since we could just cut off the top, so we flipped it over so that we could fill the pan on up again with more batter. When lo- and-behold! orange-brown batter ooze came pouring out instead of a nicely formed cake! We had to call upon the aid of Chantelle, the woman Katie lives with, who came to the rescue to help us figure out the mystery of the microwave oven gadget!
She suggested just leaving the volcanic mess upside down on the plate and putting it back in the oven for more cooking time, but on a lower heat. (this is the same oven in which Katie and I cooked chocolate cake that was done after 2 minutes, it is a total mystery to me). We sat there watching our volcanic eruption cook away in all its glory while Chantelle randomly turned up or down the heat depending on what she thought was necessary in any given minute. In the end, we had a cake burned on both top and bottom in the shape of a puddle. Oh we laughed and laughed during the whole process and it was probably the most fun I have ever had cooking. Luckily we had made enough batter to make 2 other cakes, and these came out in much better “form.” Success at last!
The cake I took home is a little burned on the top and a little doughy on the bottom, but it tastes like pumpkin and fall, and was made with lots of love. Since I am all alone this week and can’t possible eat the whole thing, one of the Berkeley boys in my program got some as his 21st birthday present from me. He seemed really stoked about it, and giving presents is one of my favorite things, so it made us both happy! I also packed some of the Pumpkin creation up for a French friend to try to give him a taste of American tradition and that some American foods are just as delicious as the French foods; and yes, I will try to explain the whole adventure to him in French so he can appreciate just how hard we American girls are willing to work to have our (pumpkin) cake and eat it too!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.067s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 6; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0421s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Simone Demarzi
non-member comment
WOW
Congradulations on the cake...and what a fun story! Have a great time Winnie. It is so amazing what all you 2003ers are up to these days! Go girl!! Be safe and be good to your self! Simone