gluten-free baking

one of the skills I picked up in ecuador, while it is not an ecuadorian dish, is making a nice flourless chocolate cake.  steph’s mom has a gluten thing so she asked me if I could make one, so I did today.

differences in making one in the US vs Ecuador?  here, you can choose your oven temp, plus there’s a spring form pan to use, fancy.  and steph has a kitchenaid so I don’t have to beat my eggs by hand.  however, being cheap and not planning ahead, the ingredients are the same.  I still don’t really follow a recipe though, as with most things it’s a technique not really an exact science.

so use about six eggs, and beat with a fair amount of sugar until super fluffy.  I use about a cup, but recipes call for more and you could use less if you want, it depends on what kind of chocolate you’re using.  then, melt 2 or 3 sticks of butter and either baking chocolate or cocoa.  the amount of butter you use depends on whether or not you have baking chocolate.   I usually use cocoa because it’s what I have, there’s no baking chocolate in Duran.  use a lot of chocolate.  it’s important.  fold the chocolate and butter into the eggs and sugar, you want it to be a dark brown color, if it’s not, add more chocolate.  then pour into a buttered floured springform pan (I’d parchment paper the bottom ideally), cover the outside of the pan with tin foil, put the springform into a casserole dish or something bigger and then pour hot water into the casserole outside the springform.  put into the oven, and bake until done, a toothpick will not come out clean but not be gooey, so use your best judgement.  let it cool before you take it out of the pan (or just be very careful, cause it is tasty right away).

that’s how I do it, it’s pretty simple and I don’t have an exact recipe. we served a small slice (a big slice will give you a stomachache)  with some left over strawberry pink stuff from saturday’s party, and it was very good.  the very light strawberry stuff complimented very well the very dense chocolate cake.  also, it looked great.

communiT

Elyse, one of my community members from Ecuador was here for a few days on a business trip, which was super fun.  She stayed here at Steph and AAron’s house

wednesday we road-tripped to notre dame for their volunteer fair.  it was pretty fun, we visited the church, got a great free lunch, met a nun who’d been to Duran, and went to the bookstore twice.  their campus bookstore has a great catholic/spirituality section, many books I’d want to read.  The volunteer fair was successful, we got like 29 kids to sign up for more info, plus I met some of the Catholic Worker people from Chicago and they were really cool and we can be friends.  I’m thinking about notre dame for grad school, though I don’t know if I could get in.  there are pluses.

it was good to see elyse, to spend time with her and share my life here with her.  we’ve never been in the states together, really, so she saw me in my normal life (similar to my ecua life, only cleaner and better dressed).

mejorcito

so I’ve also recently noticed that a lot of those latin artists that try to go mainstream in the US by singing in english don’t make it big because seriously their music is just a lot better in spanish.  example:

mia

I know, I´ve been gone for a while, but lately it seems that I only have cyber time once a week. which sucks. my lenten thing is to stay in better contact with people, but so far that hasn´t been working. I love you! I miss you! I wish I knew what was going on in your life and I hope to see you soon!

Ashen

Today is Ash Wednesday. 

like many catholic countries, carnaval is a big deal.  they play saturday through tuesday, by throwing paint, water, mud, flour, basically anything they can think of on people walking past.  you´re supposed to only play with people you know who say it´s ok, but…it happens.  I played with the Valdivia kids on Monday and Abrahan and Eduardo yesterday and my clothes from those two days are ruined.  Abrahan and Eduardo use spray paint (my leg is still red) and Abrahan picked us up and rolled us in muddy gross Arbolito puddles.  playing with the kids was fun cause I´m so much taller than them I could just run through the crowd and pour water on their heads without them getting me back, hehe.  good times. 

we went to ash wednesday mass this morning.  because everything has been closed the past two days for carnaval, today is like a monday and Abrahan was going to get mail and bananas so I left money and the car key with the guard before I left for mass.  mass was nice, though as per usual hardly anyone went up for communion and then EVERYONE went up for ashes, which was interesting.  also, everyone wanted to get their ashes from Padre and not from the other guy, so when they started there was a mad rush to be first in line for Padre.  Melissa and I went to the other guy and had hardly any wait at all.  however, after we got our ashes and were back in the pew praying, Melissa spotted Abrahan hanging around outside looking for me.  I didn´t take the cell phone to mass, of course, but I could see him outside trying to call me.  We were of course on the opposite side of the church to him, so he had to walk through mass with everyone praying and staring at him to come sit behind me and ask me how many bananas to buy.  Melissa and I tried not to laugh at how ridiculous it was.