why must everything be harder here?

The challenges of living somewhere unfamliar are many, and widely varied. Trying to communicate with someone across a language barrier is always hard; finding your way around a new city is hard; but new challenges are always popping up and surprising me, such as the shower curtain ordeal.

Recently a new one came to light. Apparently Russians don't bake much. They must leave it to the experts. There are bake shops EVERYWHERE- and everything chock-full of sugar- but most people must refrain from making their own stuff at home.

There's a definite lack of cake and cookie mixes around, so initially I thought that maybe Russians were just very hearty people who make everything from scratch. But I've had a seriously hard time finding all the ingredients I need to bake stuff from scratch. Flour and sugar were pretty easy to find. No powdered sugar, though. Baking soda took a while. Baking powder was even worse. Brown sugar is practically non-existent, and chocolate chips and vanilla extract simply are not available. Forget about finding yeast. I've been from the farmer's market to small up-scale shops to giant Wal-Mart type grocery stores with no luck. I guess I'll have to resort to Net Grocer next time I want to make cookies. Sigh.

I can wait for cookies; however, Monday was a baking emergency- it was Jonathan's birthday. I was determined to make him a cake. I thought I'd remembered seeing muffin mixes and things of that nature at a fancy Finnish grocery store, so Monday morning I took the metro there, and lo and behold, they had Betty Crocker cake mix. Yay! I picked up a box and started looking for frosting. Searched around with no luck. Even asked an employee. (Cave-man style, pointing to the frosting pictured on the box and grunting. "WHERE?? NEED.") No luck. Gave up. In desperation I picked up a can of whipped cream and some sprinkles.

When I got back home, I realized that the mix needed eggs and butter. Crap. I went to the little store up the street. They had eggs, but butter does not come in sticks here. At least not the pre-measured way like in the US. Butter just comes in a giant brick.

I got back home and carefully packed chunks of butter into a measuring cup. As I was working at it, I noticed a funky smell in the kitchen. ?? I opened the eggs. One of them had broken- long ago, apparently- and spread yolk all over the outside of the other eggs. Ewww. Three at the end of the carton looked unharmed. I rinsed them off and carefully examined them. Cracked them open and they seemed to be fine. I immediately took the other eggs out to the garbage bin. I didn't want the whole house smelling like sulfer instead of vanilla.

In order to use our mixer, which only runs on 110 power, I had to get out the big transformer, which weighs like 30 pounds. I usually get Jonathan to help with that, but it was a surprise. And of course the mixer has a short cord. I nearly gave myself a hernia hefting the transformer onto the kitchen counter.

Finally mixed everything up, researched the conversion of celcius to farenheit so I could pre-heat the oven correctly, and set the cake to baking. It came out all golden-brown. I was gleeful.

Then, on to decorating. Has anyone else ever tried to frost a cake with strawberry whipped cream? And not even thick cool-whip, I'm talking the spray stuff in a can. It is NOT easy. The cake almost instantly absorbs it. Plus it melts. And it's pretty hard to write with, so I decided to use chocolate syrup. After some practice in the sink, I managed to sort-of write "Happy Birthday" in syrup on the cake. I topped it with a bunch of sprinkles and called it a day.

Here is the fabulous finished product. Don't laugh. This took me hours.



In the end, Jonathan loved it. And it was really tasty. So it was worth the effort, but man, I guess I'm going to have to order a case of frosting along with vanilla extract and chocolate chips from net grocer.

And don't even ASK about trying to find a birthday card in Russian...