Baker Baker

The girls making brownies for Sofia's Baker Baker Day. Note the colored face- when I picked them up from school they told me they had colored on each other's face....great!


Tomorrow Sofia is Baker Baker in her class. Every Friday, one of the kids gets to be the Baker and tomorrow is Sofia's (and Sienna's) turn. Luckily, we had brought a brownie mix and a few other baking items over from the US. The girls really wanted to make brownies and put the mini M&Ms on top. And I also wanted to throw together of White Chocolate Gorp (chex mix, cheerios, nuts, M&Ms and pretzels with melted white chocolate).
Well, everything didn't turn out as good as I had wanted. First of all, the oven in this house is awful. It burns everything on the right side of the oven, so I was constantly having to turn the brownies. You can't find a 9x13 cake pan but I did find what I would descripe as a cookie sheet that had about an inch side on it. The cooking spray was really strange and I think more ended up floating in the air than on the pan. I kept spraying it on the pan but never could really tell there was anything on there. In the end, the brownies did turn out okay. I just cut off about 1/4 inch of all the sides which was a little more well done and the rest looked great.
You can't really find brownie mixes here. If you do find something like that in a store, it is imported and costs about 8 dollars a box! And no bags of M&Ms. But Sal had sent some over this last time that we had a suitcase come.
Onto the gorp....no chex mix but there is cheerios. So, I used cheerios, some sort of pocket like cereal, cashews, more M&Ms that Sal had sent and pretzel sticks. The girls and I had gone to 3 different stores after I picked them up looking for white chocolate bars. You just can't really find chocolate chips in large quantities here. You will find a small little box but it doesn't go far. So, I was just going to find the regular bars of chocolate. No one had white chocolate. I did have a bag that I brought over from the US. Let me tell you....don't microwave Nestle White Premier Chips. It turns into a big glob. I was imagining a very smooth and velvety melted chocolate to coat my mix (I have made this many times in the US). Not happening. It just kept getting more and more dense. Finally, I did manage to get it mixed into the gorp- it was pretty crumbly but I am guessing the kids will still eat it. Sofia and Sienna didn't see to mind!!!! Yes, cooking can be quite the challenge here. You definitely will not find the convenience that one does in the US.