What’s More American?

We Americans love our baked goods. We have our birthday cakes, holiday pies, bake sales, and milk and cookies.  I mean, after all, we are a nation that measures American-ness by a baked good.

A fake pumpkin pie I baked for Thanksgiving with papayas.

Like many of my peers, I baked occasionally when I was living in the U.S., but since living in Togo, with a bit more time to myself, my baking habit has increased quite a bit. When I’m bored I bake, there definitely are worse habits to have, but it sure hasn't been the best for my waistline! In an attempt to moderate my baked good intake I occasionally bring what I bake into work with me.

I've brought in a number of things from peanut butter cookies, to brownies and carrot cake into the office to share with my colleagues. Each one has proven to be quite a novelty; baked goods hardly exist in Togo. You can find packaged cookies in some of the boutiques, pastries in Lomé and some of the biggest cities, and bread that is made in some of the larger towns, but your average citizen never really bakes. You can find wheat flour based treats, but they are almost always fried.

My colleagues frequently ask how make the cake and cookies I bring in and finally on Friday my friends Felicité and Delphine came over to learn how to bake. After lunch we made some brownies. I taught them how to set up a Dutch oven to bake on the stove and showed them all the little baking techniques I've watched my mom use from since I was a child. Of course some of our implements were a little different; with no measuring cups we used tomato paste cans and our baking chocolate was a chocolate drink mix. In the end, though, we sat around the pan and dug into the warm gooey brownies by the spoonful.

I translated a few other recipes for them into French and the tomato can measures. They both excitedly said they were going to go home and bake this week-end so, maybe tomorrow I’ll get to hear about their experiments with cakes and cookies. My second goal here with the Peace Corps is to share American culture and what’s more American than apple pie, er… brownies?