The Madsens Bake a Cake

What a gorgeous day it was today!  The sky was absolutely clear in the morning with brilliant sunshine streaming through the window on my little green plants.  Did a little shopping for groceries this morning....wanted to get the freshest produce for tomorrow's dinner.

Packed up everything I would need to make two lemon cakes for tomorrow.  If I had used my head, I would have pulled out Melissa's recipe for delicious lemon bars....but I found a recipe for lemon cake that looked so good and sounded so easy, I decided to try it instead.  Mistake #1.

On the way to the Center, we stopped at another grocery store to get cake flour and buttermilk.  Fortunately, (I thought) I looked at the recipe again before we left. The store had buttermilk (found it with the help of our translator) but no cake flour.  So we continued on to the center where I looked up how to make your own cake flour...slam dunk.  You measure out a cup of regular flour, take out two tablespoons and add in two tablespoons of corn starch.  Then you sift it together several times to get it "airy."  I didn't have regular flour or corn starch.

SK set out again to the grocery store.  There is one right next to our building.  He was back in no time with the flour and corn starch.  Great.  Sifting was a bit of a problem without a sifter, so I used a strainer....getting flour and corn starch all over the counter and myself.  But I managed to get 5 cups of cake flour.  I needed lemon zest...another bit of problem without a zester.  So I worked with the grater that was there and got enough zest from 6 large lemons.

I began mixing and discovered that I had left the vanilla flavoring and powdered sugar at the apartment...another bit of a problem.  So SK went out in search of the ingredients.  The little store next door did not have vanilla OR powdered sugar.  The little store down the street and around the corner did not have vanilla OR powdered sugar.  Back around the corner and down the street to the Center and then farther on down the road in the other direction 3 blocks to another little store where they had both.  Then back to the Center where I put everything together to make two 9 X 13 cakes.

By this time it was 5:15.  It takes one cake in one slightly small oven 25 to 35 minutes to bake, and we needed to be ready to leave to the mission president's home at 5:45.  One more small problem:  it needed ten minutes to cool before putting on the glaze.

I had to put the batter for the second cake in the refrigerator.  Then I cleaned up and prayed that that cake would get done and be good.  It raised...it turned golden....and was done in 45 minutes!  Fortunately the Hansens were late and didn't there to pick us up til 6:05, so everything turned out just fine.  When I get there in the morning, I hope the other cake turns out well.

We went to President and Sister Sederholms house for dinner, along with the Hansens, Sister Sweena, Sister Hamblin, Brother and Sister Andersen, and the new kids on the block, Elder and Sister Bailey.  They will be doing records preservation.

So there were 12 of us at the dinner table.  We had sweet ham, the best funeral potatoes in the world, green salad, rolls, carrots and a selection of pumpkin, apple and pecan pie (all homemade).  Remember, this is the same Sister Sederholm who organized and cooked half of the meal to be served to the missionaries yesterday.  Remember too that Church kitchens don't have dishwashers and we don't use paper products in Denmark.  So Sister Sederholm was there at the Church yesterday all afternoon and well into the evening.  She had the help of many missionaries, but that was a production!

We sat around their table enjoying the atmosphere of their lovely home.  We spent about an hour and a half or two just visiting and eating.  It was a wonderful evening.  I sat across from Brother and Sister Andersen, both Danes.  She doesn't let me get away with speaking English.  She talks rapidly in Danish to me...and when I don't understand, she speaks slower and uses different words and some gestures to help me, only occasionally resorting to English.  She has a delightful sense of humor and kept me laughing.  I see why having a good meal after Institute is important....there is something about sitting down with friends and enjoying dinner together that relaxes and refreshes you.

It was just about a month ago we sat at their dinner table with 6 other new senior missionaries...reeling from jet lag and somewhat dazed at the new country around us.  It has been a good month and it has sped by.  Wow!  What a grand experience.