Why am I baking in this heat??

Word has gotten out and I have been baking all week...... My dad would be proud:)  I can't remember if I wrote about one of our calls, Andreman, that Ashley and I visit in the early morning. One morning her and her sister were spreading otu a huge tarp on the road and they were spreading raw coffee beans right there on the tarp to dry out. Ashley and I were really intersted in the work and our interest got us invited back to test out the homemade coffee. They also gave us a big canister of fresh coffee for our home. And a few gigantic avocados and some oranges. When we went back the next visit, again we were served coffee and given fresh fruit and avocados. So I decided to make her family a cake to thank them for all the things they were giving us. Plus, I had just made that other cake and was now in a baking kind of mood. It turned out well. And now we have an invitation to go up to the mountains with the family to visit there "jardin" where they grow there own fruits and vegi's. Yay!!
So then at meeting on Wednesday night, Mateo approached me and asked me to make a cake for a surprise for his wife. It was there 17 wedding anniversary! I was really happy to accept. Especially since I had just that day saw knock-off nutella in one of the stores and was already imagining nutella based frosting. (it is really hard to get any kind of chocolate here, so anything close to that is pulled of the shelves by all of us foreigners as soon as we see it!)  I also had been thinking about making some sort of coconut cream/pudding for the middle of the cake too.....with toasted coconut shavings on top.....

Et, Voila! A cake was born!
Here's the recipe for the Nutella frosting in case anyone wants:
3/4 cup butter
1/2 cup nutella
1 tsp vanilla
2 Tbs milk (i used coconut)
2 cups Powdered sugar (did anyone else not know out there that you can actually make your own powdered sugar simply by grinding regular sugar till it turns into a fine powder??? amazing!)
Whip up butter, then add all other ingredients, mix till smooth!


This morning I finished off my baking week with another really easy recipe. Oatmeal Lemon Bars. Cans of evaporated milk are never in short supply here and thankfully I learned of a super easy recipe for a lemon cream using just the milk, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Again, really yummy.

Sorry for all of you out there reading this who are not really into food blogs.... This is not what this blog is supposed to be about! I think I have just been reading way to many food blogs myself this week and they are all floating around in my head!

A quick update on the border crossing: Friday is one of the two days of the week they have the international market. This past Friday some of the Haitians decided to protest the new rules with crossing. So they made a fire on both sides of the bridge and would not allow any other Haitians to pass over to the DR. They did not want anyone who would usually be selling goods on the DR side to cross. Without the Haitains, there was no market! Without the market, there was a lot of dominicans with no weekly produce in their kitchens. Unfortunately, a brother in our group tried to come over for service in the morning and the Haitians would not let him pass. Even after some of the Domican Guards yelled over to them to allow him through, saying he was a witness and was not taking part in any of the protests or selling, they still would not allow him to pass. The next day, he didn't even try to pass the border there. Instead, he walked through the river further up where it is shallow enough to cross. Although we found out later that he did not need to do that. By the afternoon the fires were gone and we were allowed to pass the border to preach with no issues in Haiti. It will be really interesting to see how things develop in the the near future!


Bonjour Tout Moun!
*That guy riding by is what we use as taxi's to and from the border
*We were in Pedernale's this day and I really liked the small house that is behind us.