3rd day of Advent and a cake recipe

"Come! Come wherever you are! Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving, come. This is not a caravan of despair. It doesn't matter if you've broken your vow a thousand times, still come and yet again come! - Rumi

 

I like the quote for today. I've used it many times. I have "fallen off my bike" many times and always gotten back on, however as an adult sometimes it's helpful to have a little flowery poetry to remind us of the lessons we've known since we were young. We can always choose to try again, no matter the task.

Which strangely enough brings me to my cake recipe. I've had a rather love-hate relationship with baking. I always loved the idea of making something with my own hands, but by the time I got to the step of pulling the pan out of the oven I always managed to have either forgotten to set the timer so my masterpiece was burned beyond perfection, or I forgot an ingredient, or my favorite mistake- I added 1TBSP of salt and only 1tsp of cinnamon instead of the other way around. Sometimes I felt as though there was a tricky pixie hiding in the corners of my kitchen, popping out to spread her mischief when I wasn't looking.  At the revealing of each mistake that head slapping - "oh man!, really?!" moment would wash over me and I'd swear I would be that much more diligent the next time. And then another mistake happened and another and another. Sometimes I swear I followed all the directions but cakes continued to come out more the thickness of pancakes, cookies always more like hardened doggy biscuits and my bread never filled the house with the intoxicating warm aroma of a homemade fresh loaf.

Then I started teaching. In a Waldorf program. Baking isn't an extracurricular it is the curriculum (well, part of it anyway). With a group of children surrounding me, ours could definitely not be a caravan of despair! Their smiling faces and anticipating hearts expected nothing less than something miraculously delicious. When we finally had a real oven to use (I won't go into the details of the mishaps of using a bread machine,) the first time baking with children was nothing short of a miracle. I still don't get it. The bread came out good. I mean, like really good. And the next time too, and the next. It didn't matter if the bees accidentally gave us more honey one day (aka an overly excited child poured in double/triple/or quadruple the quantity) or any other what-I-used-to-consider-mistake happened. Yes the outcome was always different, but it always came out not only edible, but enjoyable. The children ended up becoming my kitchen pixies, only whatever they added when I wasn't looking was something lovely indeed!

And then I started trying to bake without my helpful kitchen fairies and I started to actually make tasty things. Like that Stollen Loaf/Cake I made my Dad one year for Christmas. Or the pumpkin-raisin bread or the chocolate zucchini cake. And bread, the most challenging of all started to come out of the oven always delicious. And then, we moved onto our bicycles and into a tent. No more electricity. No more oven. And another kind of "Oh, man!" feeling washed over me.

Oh how I've missed my oven, or rather, any oven. But again, this is not a caravan of despair! So I turned to trying to learn how to cook; another skill I have yet to figure out. We did have a camp stove after all. A year later and now it's only about 50% of the time whatever I cook is a flop (that's an improvement, believe it or not.) And then sometime between missing my oven and wondering when the cooking fairies were going to show up, a friend let me in on a wonderful secret!

You can make a cake without an oven!

Depending on the ingredients you add it can either be as sophisticated as any other oven cake, or more like boy scout campout fare.

The Recipe: Cookie Cake

• Pick out a bowl or dish that will hold the size of cake you wish to make. (You won't be baking it, so it can be wooden, glass, ceramic, tin, whatever you have.
• In another small bowl pour or squeeze in some orange juice. (The quantity will depend on how big of a cake you are making) As a guide- a regular size 8inch cake pan would need about 1 orange worth of juice. However, if you're planning on sharing with anyone I recommend making more than that because I could personally eat an 8inch cake pan's worth easily in one sitting.
• Have a large pile or bowl of cookies on the side. If you homebake them, that's how to create a sophisticated cake, but then again you need an oven for that. If you don't have an oven (or time) you can buy the cookies.
• Heat up some chocolate bars or chocolate chips (they don't have choc.chips in Spain, so I just use regular chocolate bars) in a double boiler. Or if you are like me and don't have a double boiler, just heat up some water in a big pot and then place a smaller dish, cup, mug, frying pan (whatever you have that will fit) into the pot. Place the chocolate in the smaller dish/cup/mug/whatever, making sure that the water and chocolate don't mix. The stove will heat the water which will melt the chocolate. You can heat the chocolate directly on the stove, but it burns so easily that I wouldn't recommend that. While you are assembling the cake you want the chocolate to stay melted, so keeping it in the double boiler contraption after it has melted (even if the stove is off) will maintain the warmth. Also a mix of dark and milk or all dark chocolate tastes, in my opinion, the best. 
• Dip one cookie quickly in the orange juice and then place it in the dish you are using. Repeat until you have made one flat layer of cookies in the cake dish. 
• Then repeat so you have two layers of cookies one on top of the other. Depending on the shape and size of your bowl, you might have to stack the cookies like brick work to make the layers flat and level. Try not to break the cookies though, or if you do only break them in half.
• Spoon the melted chocolate over the layer of cookies and do your best to even it out so there is a layer of chocolate. This is tricky though because often times the cookies start to move. Better to have flat cookies and uneven chocolate than the other way around. 
• Sprinkle shredded or flaked coconut over the melted chocolate.
• Repeat the process. 2 more layers of cookies that have been dipped in orange juice, melted chocolate, coconut. 
• When the cake is the height you wish, put it in a cool place for the chocolate to harden. A refrigerator would work really well. But I've also placed ours in a cold stream or even in the front seat of the van in the shade (this works in the winter - it would have the opposite effect in the summer, obviously.)
• Then with a spoon/fork/camp knife/fingers dig in and enjoy.
• Side note - with the orange juice you can add a little bit of liqueur for a little something extra.
• Another side note - the cookies you use should be hard and crunchy. If you use soft ones, then when dipping in the orange juice they'll just turn to mush and it will be a really weird texture. 

That's all for now.