Baking in Benin

My mother works in not so mysterious ways sometimes, and when she sent me “Baking in Kigali” to read, with a cake mix, she knew what she was doing.

It is 3 p.m. or 15h, and I am sitting on my new bed (well the bed isn’t new, but the frame is). I can feel the beats of sweat forming in increased numbers—no one sits inside in Africa during the chaleur, ever. Normally I don’t either, and instead I move with the sun to shaded areas of the concession typically. Today, however, I volunteered to make dinner for my concession family—starting with the cake.

I made the icing first, using a recipe from my “Cooking in Benin” handbook, provided by the Peace Corps. I am not sure if I did it correctly—it doesn’t look like the icing I have made with my mom before, but then again I didn’t use powder milk with my mom, and I was able to refrigerate the items. It tastes fine, but I am skeptical of my altered taste buds. Right now it is sitting in a bowl with a lit on it, in the most shaded room of my house—the same one where I am sweating profusely at the moment.

I mixed up the cake. Again I am apprehensive. I received eggs from my neighbor, they were difficult to crack open, and I know I probably should have tested them to see if they were bad, but I guess I am going to try my luck—this will probably later haunt me in my “I wish I had a little more common sense” stories. I decided since I don’t have the proper size cake pan, because I have to make a Dutch oven out of pans, I will make the cake three layers.

Layers worry me. I worry too much. When I was in high school I took it on myself to bake my mother a birthday cake. I will never forget that cake. Even if I wanted to, my mom documented it with a photo—as I plan on doing with this cake today. The cake itself tasted quite good, but it was very lopsided, and full of icing. It was two layers, and seeing as I wanted to surprise my mom, I did not call on her for her expertise, as I recall. This is why I did not know the correct way to cut across the top of the cake to make it flat, and therefore not capable of leaning, like the tower at Pisa.

The first cake is done. It is cooling. Once I remove it from the pan. Clean the pan, I will make the second layer. Repeat for the third layer. If all fails when said in done, at least it is like the first cake, and you can’t say I didn’t try. Unfortunately, there is no beautiful colorful sprinkles to cover up this cake, like that first; just a family of Beninese, who for all I know, don’t know what this kind of cake is even suppose to look like.