Baking cake

After a mere 4 months of living in our apartment, we finally figured out how to turn on our oven. Actually, to be honest, Wahied's friend's ancient mother came 2 hours across Cairo to teach us how to turn on the oven. The secret, we learned, is to turn the gas on BEFORE trying to light it.

In celebration of our new-found appliance, I decided to bake a cake. Those of you who have experienced any food I have prepared in the U.S. already know that this is risky business for me. But, I did once bake a nice cake, and riding high on the remembered glory of a cake 2 years in the past, I decided to give it a try.

First we needed supplies. Getting a pan was no problem, nor were many of the common ingredients. Baking soda was more difficult because it doesn't exist here. But baking powder does exist, and provided a reasonable substitute (the internet came to my rescue in terms of just how to do it). Baking chocolate exists, but the kinds I've seen before were 50 or 60 LE per bar, so I opted for something on the shelf next to it that was covered in Arabic writing and only cost 6 LE. I couldn't find things that are 'nice' to have, like vanilla, so I did without. Measuring cups as we know them don't exist here, so I made do with what I have.

On to the baking. I got out my ingredients, I buttered and floured the pan and set to work. I made Wahied light the oven, because something about throwing a lit match into a box full of gas doesn't really sit well with me when I factor in my propensity toward disaster. I was able to calculate the temperature in *C (175) but the oven only measures in funny units (the evenly spaced lines go 125, 135, 150, 190, 210, 220), so we put it somewhere between 150* and 190*.

Then it got to measuring things....I decided that a small juice glass is about a cup, and that 2 teeny weeny eggs equal one large egg. Egyptian sticks of butter are square, and I'm pretty sure they're much larger than our sticks of butter, but I put one in, because the recipe that I had patched together from a series of internet recipes called for "one stick" and I'm not about to let my recipe down. (Also, 'one stick of butter' was probably the only ingredient that all of the recipes I saw agreed on)

My first true slip-up came when measuring the chocolate. It had asked for 4 oz of dark, unsweetened baking chocolate. The 6 LE chocolate I had bought was certainly not dark, and was actually kinda rubbery. And, of course, it did not come in neatly measured out ounce or two ounce squares. I checked the packaging and it didn't say anywhere how much the entire package weighed so I couldn't even reason it out. I figured I'd ask Wahied.
"YaDode, how much of this is 4 ounces?"
"What's an ounce?"
"You know, a unit of measurement we use in America?"
"Er....yes. That much."

I should probably have guessed that whatever amount of chocolate I did end up putting in, it was NOT 4 ounces, because instead of turning the batter into a black color, it was beige at best. But I chugged along, put the cake in the pan, and put it in the oven, which, to be honest, didn't feel quite as hot as I imagined 175*C to feel like. (I could comfortably put my hand inside the oven without a glove)

While the cake was baking I made a really successful mocha butter cream frosting, using Nescafe and instant hot cocoa powder as flavouring.

The cake's allotted 25 minutes came and went, and the cake still needed some time. So I gave it 5 more minutes, then another 5, then another 5 and then decided that ready or not, the cake had to come out.

It has risen mostly, and the outsides looked passable, but the middle was still droopy. I fork-tested it and the fork came out clean, but the cake was still a little....wobbly and sticky?

After letting it cool for a while, I tried to gently take it out of the pan. Despite careful buttering and flouring, the cake wouldn't budge. So I left it upside down on a plate. After a few moments, the cake made the exact same sound people's legs make when they stand up after sitting in a very hot car with the fake-leather seats while wearing shorts, and a couple of chunks of the cake flopped out.

I rescued them, stuck them on a tray, and frosted them. Then I pulled out the other pieces, plopped them on the tray and frosted them too.

Wahied, who at this point was in stitches over my really disgusting cake, and had long since abandoned any effort to hide what he truly thought, miraculously was willing to taste the cake. He took a large (and oddly shaped) chunk, and took a big bite. There was a pause, he made a face, another pause, and he said "you know, this cake actually isn't bad. I like the cake part a lot. But that hard sugar stuff on top..." "the frosting?" "yeah, the frosting, it's disgusting. You eat the top part and I'll eat the bottom."

The system works well for me, as the cake is truly the worst cake I have ever seen, and the frosting (which is impossible to get wrong) is perfect.

In the future, I will order baked goods from the bakery down the street. There they have an oven that gets hot, experience in Egyptian products (and baking in general) and a more complete knowledge of the metric system.

I'm going to go try to choke down some more of that cake (we're 1/2 way there!), and I promise to post more as soon as something reasonably funny happens to me. Cheers!