Ok, so it’s time for a blog that is completely and entirely just for fun – no deep hidden meaning here, but it will give you a glimpse into my new life this month in Romania. We’re here at Caminul Feliz near the city of Oradea, living in a beautiful guest house that is by far and above the nicest accommodations we have had so far on the race, and probably ever will! Quite the blessing from Jesus! It’s funny how easy it was to adapt to camping out last month, and how equally easy it is to embrace the comforts of home this month. We have wonderful mattresses on our bunk beds, hot showers, a couple of pianos and a number of couches in our living room, along with a big long table where we eat our meals (all 21 of us racers that are living here together).
Our ministry this month is building houses in the “village”, where the families that make up the ministry live. These parents are Romanian couples who have taken in a handful of the many orphans in Romania left in the wake of communism. Most of the parents have about 12 children, mostly orphans, though some may be biological as well – the awesome part is that the kids get to grow up in a family environment rather than an orphanage. There is also a cow farm here, so we get fresh milk and miles of beautiful farmland to go running. Arriving here on Monday felt a bit like coming home.
We are cooking for ourselves this month, and another wonderful amenity we have here is a massive kitchen. Yesterday afternoon my teammate Hosanna returned from a grocery shopping trip with the announcement, "Jill, we got chocolate torte mix for you to make for our team!” It hasn’t taken long for my new teammates to discover how much I love baking… especially desserts. 😉 So after dinner dishes were cleaned up, I pulled out the box and found myself face to face with obstacle number 1: the directions were all in Romanian! Problem solvers that we are, we used Wes’ laptop to translate it on Google (granted, the process of typing it all in was a bit arduous). While Wes hunted down a baking dish and other cooking utensils in our amazing kitchen here at the house, I stumbled onto obstacle number 2: everything in a Romanian recipe is measured in the metric system! So, how much is 50 ml? Anybody?
The mix… and me trying to translate the back of the box (Photos by Wes Vickers)
We hunted down a measuring cup that read “50 dl” and calculated the conversion. Meanwhile I moved to the stove to make the syrup, mixing the sugar and water until dissolved. I asked Wes to read the translated directions that were next (I had typed in the Romanian words but not bothered to read the translation in advance…) Obstacle number 3:
“Add a vial of rum…” he stopped and after a brief moment of confusion, all we could do was burst out laughing. No clue how much a vial is, and I’m afraid the girls forgot to stock the pantry with rum… 😉 Our solution was a packet of Starbucks Via mixed into the syrup to add flavor in place of the missing liquor.
Next, it was time to bake the cake. Obstacle number 4: Unfortunately, the oven scale was rather strange and instead of having temperatures on it, the dial had a scale of 1 to 9. Okay, even Celsius would have been manageable – this I had no idea what to do with. Google came to the rescue again. Apparently, on a gas oven, 4 is equivalent to about 175 C or 350 F. Perfect! Into the oven went the cake.
We translated directions for the fluffy chocolate frosting, substituted cane sugar for powdered sugar and Wes’ arm got a workout in lieu of beating with an electric mixer for 5 minutes until fluffy… Meanwhile I made the chocolate glaze. We crossed our fingers that the result would be decent after all the unexpected alterations and hurdles.
Then I discovered obstacle number 5: “Chill the cake for three hours before serving.” Oh no! That was absolutely out of the question… it was already close to 11 pm and we had work the next morning. We brazenly cheated and popped the assembled torte into the freezer instead for about half an hour.
The finished torte!
It was a success! After Bible study, we dug into the delicious chocolaty layers and decided it was well worth the effort.
Jo Linda and Naomi digging in 🙂
So there you have it: how to make a chocolate torte in Romania!
