Cake Baking

Tio Tio, Noi, L, and Oat

Last Saturday, we spent the day with Noi and Oat, two of the locals from the office.  Noi asked L to help her bake some cakes for her brother, aunt, and son.  On this particular Saturday, L helped her bake a cake for her brother's birthday party on Sunday.  Noi decided she wanted to make a Mississippi Mud Pie Cake.  This wouldn't be a problem if we were in the US.  However, here it is so difficult to find ingredients to make a cake.  A cake mix is out of the question!  They are hard to find, and if you can find them they are over $7 a box.

Lunch at Pizza Hut

Tio Tio loves mozzarella sticks too.

Pigging out at Pizza Hut

Noi and Oat met us at our apartment.  Noi had a coupon for Pizza Hut that she wanted to use because it expired  at the end of Feb., so we headed off to Pizza Hut for lunch.  We had a feast.  We decided not to count calories that day and enjoyed ourselves.  Noi loves mozzarella sticks, so we got a couple of orders.  Then, we had cheese pizza and a sausage roll supreme pizza.  Noi brought her son, so he had BBQ chicken wings. 

After lunch, we headed back to our apartment for the project of the day.  It was quite an event.  L and the two girls got busy baking cakes while J played with Tio Tio in the living room floor.  Oat and Noi were fascinated at all the ingredients it took to make a cake from scratch.  L explained that when we lived in the states we always made cakes from a box.  Each of the girls took turns measuring, dumping, and stirring the ingredients.  Noi enjoyed melting the butter on the stove.  Oat found her niche using the mixer.  As they made the cake, L explained what birthdays are like in the US-party, dinner out, presents, cake with candles, and the birthday song.  Birthdays here are much different.  They don’t do much to recognize birthdays.  If they do, you will eat out with the family (nothing new because they eat out every night).  It is cheaper for the locals to eat their dinner out than cook it themselves.  While you are at dinner with your family, their may be one gift from the entire group.  There are no cards, cake, singing, or big parties.

Mixing it all up

Oat loved putting in the ingredients

Almost done

Mississippi Mud Pie Cake

J had a good time with Tio Tio.  He kept him active and on the move.  Even in our little apartment, Tio Tio found ways to keep things interesting and J on his toes.  They had fun building different structures with Jenga blocks.

Noi decided that we needed to make two cakes.  One to eat today and then one for her to take to her party tomorrow. Well, L ran out of ingredients to make a second cake from scratch, so she decided they would make a yellow cake with chocolate icing for us.  We had brought this cake mix and icing from the states with us to make for her birthday in April.  Thankfully, we had it on hand, but L was a little sad to use it.  It was really funny listening to Noi and Oat as they realized how easy it is to make a cake from a box instead of from scratch.  They had a hard time understanding how the box mixes worked.  L had to prove to them that it was enough ingredients and that you didn’t need to add anything else other than water, eggs, and oil.  While the Mississippi Mud Pie Cake cooled we were able to ice the yellow cake with chocolate frosting and enjoy our dessert.  They both loved it, but Oat couldn’t finish her whole piece because it was too sweet.  Noi ate every bite.  To finish up the day, we iced the other cake and then wrote Happy Birthday on the top in hot pink icing.  Hot Pink was the only kind of food coloring L could find.  The cake turned out to be a masterpiece.  We just hoped her family would like it.  On Monday at the office, Noi told us that her family didn’t actually enjoy the cake too much.  They thought it was too sweet.  They loved that we made it for them though and enjoyed hearing about the cake baking experience.  It is just so hard to understand how they don’t like sweet stuff as much as we do. 

The final two cakes!

What a great day to spend together with the girls!