Baking in Kenya

Recently, I have been experimenting with baking using a jiko oven. A jiko oven is basically a big pot with sand in the bottom with a smaller pot inside sitting on top of a charcoal cooking stove (jiko) and then a plate covering it with hot coals on top. Luckily Garissa is, as a friend put it, one big beach just without an ocean, so we can get the sand out of our yard (which isn’t so bad if you just ignore the fact that goats wander in and out and poop in our yard all the time… and you clean the pot afterwards obviously - don’t worry, it doesn’t ever get near the food). The other funny thing about baking in Kenya is that I don’t have any measuring cups or spoons so I just guesstimate. I’ve always felt like more of a true chef that way anyway so its kind of fun, but does create some challenges. I tried making brownies first, which turned out horribly… this was before I found out about putting the coals on top too so it burned on the bottom and didn’t cook ever on the top. My roommates actually still tasted it and continued to snack off it until it was gone however (guess they were as desperate for a sweet as me). Later that night I tried making bread, with the help of Rose, who showed me the proper construction of a jiko oven. The bread (the kind I always used to make back home - yeast free and super simple) turned out really good J The next night, after having another craving for sweets but not wanting to bother with a jiko oven, I decided to try my hand at one of the fudge recipes in the PC cook book. I didn’t have all of the ingredients for any of the recipes so I just took what I had and tried. It actually turned out well and now my roommates are always asking me what I’m going to bake next. This baking spree was the result of a three-day weekend after which I decided maybe it’s a good thing I don’t get that much time off or I’d be getting fat in no time.
But, after enough times being asked by Sheha what I would be baking I decided to try something else. We struck up the deal that if she got the jiko ready I would handle the rest, since that is the part that keeps my lazy ass from ever attempting to bake anything. Jikos can be hard to light and just generally a pain so this was a good deal. I guesstimated my way through a chocolate cake recipe, adding a bit of my own stuff, and the end result was nothing short of amazing. It was a cake I wouldn’t be embarrassed to claim as my own even if it had come from a real oven in America. I’m looking forward to making that one again.