A birthday

Today is my husband’s birthday. I am going to attempt to make a cake. I didn’t bring a cake recipe with me, and buying separate ingredients sounds like a pain in the neck with shopping the way it is here.

We managed to find a reasonably priced packet mix. There weren’t many flavours to choose from, so we chose “white”. Not sure what flavour that is, and reading through the ingredients last night, it was not at all obvious what the flavour will be.

I plan a quick trip to the corner shop to buy some oranges this morning, because at least they can give it some flavour.

The issue with cooking cakes here is the altitude. We are at about 2500m above sea level. Apparently that makes a difference! The packet has “High Altitude” instructions for over 3500ft, which involve adding a little extra flour and a little extra water. We will follow those instructions.

The other issue is the oven here in our apartment. It is an electric oven – fine as long as we don’t have a blackout, which we probably won’t as the power has been quite reliable lately – but it doesn’t have temperatures marked on the dial. It has 1 to 10. I have no idea what a 1 equates to, or a 5 or a 10…

So it will be interesting…

I opened the packet last night just to check whether there was an icing (frosting) mix included. Ah no. And we don’t have any icing (confectioner’s) sugar. So thank goodness for the internet, I went looking for icing that doesn’t need icing sugar. I found one where you boil together sugar and water, beat an eggwhite to stiff peaks, then pour the syrup into it. We will try that.

It will all be a bit of an experiment. Hopefully it will turn out ok. Otherwise it will just be an “interesting” part of a very different birthday.

Oh, and if its terrible, I saw the other day that the bakery at the Hilton Hotel had Sacher Tortes for about $16. Good to know…!