Teaching Basic Baking

This is reposted from Donna's cooking blog on allrecipes.com. It is a great picture of her volunteer ministry in Toronto. Enjoy!

Since moving to Toronto, one of my greatest joys has been volunteering at a nearby temporary residence for refugee claimants. Canada's immigration policy is such that over 100,000 refugees are admitted into the country each year to begin the process of gaining permanent residence. One of the residences for those who enter and declare refugee status upon their arrival into the country or soon thereafter, is called Adam House, and is just a few blocks from my house. I go there to work as a volunteer twice a week including the busiest day, which is Tuesday.

This past Tuesday I decided to teach a young immigrant woman to bake. She had been asking me how to bake a cake, and one day brought a boxed cake mix to me to try it out. She had never baked anything before, not having owned an oven in her home country. Although I rarely use a boxed cake mix for anything, I thought it would be a good way to get her started on the basics of preparation, such as pre-heating the oven and greasing the pan. Since we have no electric mixer at the residence, she used a large wooden spoon to stir the batter. To her delight, the cake turned out very well, and was quickly devoured by the other residents who happened to be in the house at the time.

But this past week, I remembered a cake recipe that a Spanish friend had given me years ago when he realized how much the church that we were attending in Bilbao depended upon my baking skills for their pot-luck suppers. I made the recipe many times over in Spain, where I found the ovens to be deficient for many other cake recipes. Normally, my cakes, and those of other Americans used to good ovens and excellent ingredients in the States, would rise well, and then fall. I always blamed the ingredients for this as well as the oven, too soft margarine, too moist flour, or whatever. Recipes that I used at home in Wisconsin, New Jersey, or New York, that always came out perfect, simply flopped in a Spanish kitchen. Among missionary wives, we had our own theories regarding this phenomenon, and our remedies which we frequently shared with one another, down to a science. Regardless, sometimes the best made plans, and cakes, fell after they came out of the oven. But with this recipe, handed to me by my Spanish friend, I always found success.

Looking for the recipe? You'll have to visit the blog!