Baking In Ecuador

November 1, 2010

The mission is having Zone Conference Tuesday and Wednesday. The Senior Sisters do a lot of baking and cooking for these meetings to feed all the missionaries. So, I was given the assignment of 3 dozen cookies and a cake. Saturday we went shopping at Super Maxie (that`s the name of the grocery store) and attempted to purchase the ingrediants for the cookies. There are many things not available here and many things that are a little different from home. The shortening comes in a bag and is very soft. The butter comes in a large cube and is very hard. The sugar has much larger granuals than at home and doesn`t taste as sweet to me. We couldn`t find crasines but did find some cranberry snacks in a very small bag that I could use. Then we had to go to Mega Maxi (this is a bigger store) to buy a hand mixer. When we got everything together I started to cook. My kitchen is the size of a closet and no counter space at all, very cozy. Anyway I got the cookies put together and started baking them. At home it takes about 10 - 12 minutes to cook. At about 5 minutes these were buring. I really for some reason thought it would take longer at 9,000 feet but that is not the case. This is another thing I miss, my stone baking sheets. The other Senior Missionaries said they tasted good, but I thought they were a little flat compared to back home. Tonight I am trying a cake. We`ll see how that goes. We were suppose to get Internet Saturday but the installer did not show up. We are in a holiday now until Thursday, so it may be another week before I can post some pictures.