Attempting to Bake in Argentina

Cooking outside your own country is never easy. The Irishman was on his way to visit me in Buenos Aires, arriving on his birthday, and I wanted to bake him a cake. 

I set out looking for ingredients in one of the biggest supermarkets around, but came a cropper as I got to baking powder and icing sugar. After about an hour pounding the aisles, I eventually found what I believed would be baking powder, purely because the logo looked familiar. 

Icing sugar, on the other hand, was a different story. It doesn't exist here. After much searching, I found some rock-hard packets of hardened chocolate and knew this would be the closest thing. Basically, you boil some water and then put the closed chocolate packet into the bowl of hot water so that it melts. Then you squeeze it out of the packet to cover the cake. Not exactly icing - just plasticky-tasting melted chocolate, but it was better than nothing.

Contending with my oven is hard at the best of times, but it was only when I came to bake the cake that I realised the knobs have no temperatures on them, so I pretty much guessed the temperatures. I also had to guess the weights and measurements of the flour and the rest because it was only at the last minute that I realised I had no weighing scales. I'd already spent a fortune buying baking tins and other equipment. Do men realise the lengths we go to?!

Makeshift cake icing...

I just about managed not to burn myself lighting the oven by sticking my hand into the gas chamber with an enormous matchstick and the cake came out 20 minutes later looking vaguely reasonable. I covered it in the weird melted chocolate stuff and finished off with chopped up minature alfajor biscuits. Well, beggars can't be choosers!

Ok, it's not exactly Hummingbird Bakery standards... But it's the thought that counts, right?