No use crying over busted marmites!

Thank goodness for having friends with a sense of humor!

My neighbor Carole and I had big plans for today – we were going to bake a cake.

The idea came about when I was at a nun-crowning ceremony the other day (that’s a story for another time, I guess) and there was a delicious, fluffy cake, presumably Pillsbury.  My diving in for seconds (after ever so kindly passing on the fish and chicken and pork and green mush) sparked a conversation about my love for all things sweet.  Upon hearing that I know how to bake cakes as delicious as our favorite little Doughboy, Carole became eager to learn.

Baking was one of my favorite pastimes in Sanguéré-Paul.  Madame Tizi frequently requested chocolate cakes, chocolate chip muffins were a hit with everyone, and of course we can’t forget about cookie day.  Only once, however, had I baked a cake over a fire, and even then, it was Madame Tizi who controlled the flames.

Nevertheless, I approached the task with full confidence.  I've baked hundreds of cakes in my life (that may be exaggerating a bit, unless we include individual cupcakes), and there was only that one time that I accidentally mistook Bisquik for powdered sugar (but I was, like, 10 years old, so give me a break).  As long as Carole handled the fire, there was not a doubt in my mind that this would work out (or shall we say, that it would be a piece of cake!)

Things were going well – we bought two eggs in town for 75CFA each and were able to scrounge up the rest of the ingredients in our own kitchens.  After sifting out the worms and weevils from the flour, our ingredients were good to go and our batter was better than ever!

Carole had started up the fire, and we created a dutch oven exactly as I had done several times before: a bit of sand to fill the bottom of a big pot, with three little rocks to prop up the cake pan.  Easy peasy.

We let the dutch oven preheat, and then carefully plopped our cake pan in, heading back inside to clean up (I'm not the tidiest chef in the world, as my parents know very well.  I tend to take Emeril's "BAM!" technique a wee bit too far, unintentionally "bam"ming flour and chocolate all over every surface, which I suppose is typically unwelcome in other people's kitchens.)

Carole’s daughter, Oceanne, was our timekeeper.  We had put the cake over the fire at 1:30PM.  Usually, when preparing over a gas stove, a cake will take 30-40 minutes.  The time we baked over a fire at Madame Tizi’s, it was closer to 40 minutes.  Nevertheless, Oceanne and I were curious to see how it was progressing.  At 1:42PM, a mere 12 minutes over the fire, we just had to check it out.

Oceanne, ready to check the cake!

Guess what we found?

The bottom of the pot had burnt straight through, leaving a gaping hole, with the half-blackened cake resting directly on the flaming logs.  We had burnt a hole through solid metal! 

Feeling guilty and embarrassed (Maria Bennett, Cake-baker Extraordinaire should really not make such mistakes), I apologized profusely.  Neither Carole nor I had ever heard of such a thing happening!  Thankfully she has a fantastic sense of humor, and we spent the rest of the afternoon making jokes about our broken marmite while eating smoky cake.  Just like there’s no use crying over spilt milk, there’s no use crying over a busted marmite!  

“If it were one of us who got burned that would be a different issue.  But this?  It’s just a marmite.  We can buy another."

Next time, we promised each other, we will succeed.  However, we are now aware that we can only bake as many cakes as however many large pots we own!

Whoops!