Some of you may have heard that cooking at an altitude is rather different. In Nairobi we are at 5500ft above sea level and believe it or not, this affects how your cakes rise in the oven.
I have heard about special 'high altitude, fool proof cake' recipes but being an avid cook I didn't think they would be necessary. I've cooked a lot of cakes in my time and considered myself a bit of a pro. Big mistake!
Here is one of my first attempts of cooking a coffee cake in my gas oven at high altitude.
As you can see, flat as a pancake pretty much! Rather than rising it seems to run over the sides of the tin and onto the shelf below. Here it does seem to rise, so perhaps the mixture just wants to be free from the tin, rather than stuck inside one.
So here begins my 'High altitude cake experiment'.
Feeling like I am now back at school I am going to keep experimenting until I can make delicious cakes again. I am going to keep changing my method and see if I can figure out how to make my cakes rise once more.
There are some things I already do differently that I must tell you about before the experiment begins. Firstly the butter. Previously I have used margarine but here I am using real butter - more expensive option but there isn't really an alternative. Secondly, the flour. Most of it is All Purpose ( Plain I think) so this is what I will be using first of all. And then we come to the oven itself. It's gas, which I haven't used before, but I know lots of people like using gas. It's a good oven but does have a tendency to randomly switch itself off during cooking when I am not looking - but this only adds to the challenge -right?
So let the challenge begin and I will post the next cake pictures after the next experiment.
Maz
