Bake Me a Cake

I love baking. For me, heading into the kitchen to mix together eggs, flour, sugar, and a variety of other ingredients is not only creatively fulfilling but also relaxing. Whether I’m grating carrots for my award winning Carrot Cake, or zesting lemons for my Double Lemon Pound Cake, there is nothing quite as nice as licking the bowl after popping what I know will be a perfect dessert into the oven.

Baking from scratch has always been a source of pride for me. I still remember the first time I was in a supermarket in Maryland with Hubby around Thanksgiving and eagerly yelled down an aisle at him, “Sweetie, you’ve got to see this! It’s amazing! They have canned pumpkin here! Have you ever seen such a thing before?” The withering look I received from Hubby was nothing compared with the scathing looks the women within hearing distance shot my way.

My mother, you see, is a do-it-from-scratch kind of lady. From making fresh pumpkin puree and pastry for pies to throwing the bones from dinner into a pot to make stock, prepackaged conveniences just weren’t the norm growing up. (Kraft Dinner is a sacred meal and therefore does not fall into the convenience food category.) Most people don’t have time for details like this anymore and my mother certainly didn’t when I was growing up, so you can imagine the guilt I felt the first time I picked up a box of Betty Crocker Brownie Mix.

It took me moving all the way to Kenya to discover this amazing dessert in a box. No matter what distracted me while I measured out the ingredients, they came out perfectly every time without even a hint of a charred edge that my homemade White Chocolate Brownies usually had. Even Hubby said he preferred them. Suddenly, I realized what my peers had been drooling over for all those years. Mrs. Crocker knew what she was doing!

This love of baking, whether from a box or beloved recipe, is yet another reason my life in Egypt has been somewhat frustrating. You see I don’t have an oven. Full disclosure: I do have an oven but out of respect for the people who live in my building, I choose not to use it.

My stove has five lovely gas burners that light with the aid of an electric starter. Click, click, click, poof! The oven, on the other hand, requires a match. Scratch, light, throw, boom! I know millions of people out there do this every day without blowing anything up but I’m not one of those people. I am neither coordinated nor lucky enough to manage to not cause someone (probably myself) bodily damage whilst lighting my oven with a match.

There have been no wafting scents of Triple Chocolate Cookies or delectable crumbs of Pumpkin Crumble Pie in the Typ0/Hubby household for a year and half. The only person sadder about my lack of baking outlet than me has been Hubby. While my neighbours Black Beard and Adelpha have kindly offered the use of their oven from time to time, I can hardly sneak into their flat at two in the morning to create a batch of Boredom Cupcakes.

As much as I love Egypt and the life we have in Cairo, I look forward to the day I once again have an oven that won’t kill the neighbourhood just because I wanted to whisk ingredients together. In fact, I think the prospect of baking may be reason enough to dream about moving again.