Cake

These past couple weekends, I've eaten lots of cake.  It's something about it being the weekend, and letting loose, and also the bad influence of my friend the Cake Baby.

Here in Ecuador, the oven is probably the most neglected kitchen appliance.  If there even is one in the kitchen, it is most likely used as a storage unit.  The art/science of baking is generally left to the panaderías.  As a result, most cakes you find here fall into one of two categories: ridiculously melodramatic, or your basic sponge cake.  Both usually come in one flavor: dry.  Dry with a layer of manjar (akin to dulce de leche) in the middle.

Type 1
These are the kind you find displayed in bakeries.  They usually have elaborate designs based on children's movies or soccer teams.  The example I have rendered below is actually much less fancy than the real thing, which I saw in the window of a panadería and which had 5 cakes and lots more stairs and fancy figurines than I had patience for.  Quinceañera means business.

Type 2
On the other end of the spectrum there is homemade sponge cake.  Very simple, no frills or frostings.  Sometimes it's made with orange juice to add a little flavor and zest to what would otherwise be a not-so-exciting experience for your palate (i.e., dry sponge).

I was prepared to give up on cake here, tempted to tell people to stick to their queso de leche and their flan.

But these past few weekends have completely changed my mind.  Folks, I bring you tidings of great joy: There is delicious cake to be found in Ecuador!  Here are some good Ecuadorian cakes I've eaten recently...over the past week, maybe...or maybe over a longer period of time...or maybe not...does it really matter?  Here's the cake!

Proof #1
Cake we ordered from a friend who knows how to bake and runs a small business out of his house.  This is the basic sponge cake, but done the way it was meant to be done.  I mean, this is what every cake with manjar wants to be.  Soft and spongy with rich, creamy manjar in the middle holding it all together.  It's so beautiful in its simplicity that it could do without the frosting and sprinkles and be just as good, or better.

Proof #2
Here is one Cake Baby and I found on our evening prowl around the neighborhood.  We stopped into the Colombian bakery for a bottle of water and came out with this little guy in tow.  He's got a lot going for him: chocolate flavored cake (a rarity here), frosting that doesn't taste like air, and some kind of flavor shot in the filling that tasted suspiciously rummy.  And so not-dry that we didn't even need to buy the bottle of water we'd originally come for.

Proof #3
Cake Baby and I made the mistake of walking into a bakery where they sell cake by the slice.  D'oh.  We couldn't resist the lemon pound cake, and after that the chocolate cake with Oreo frosting.  For about $2 per slice, that was a pretty good find.  Especially considering both types of cake were delicious.  I might have to go back today and get some more.

Proof #4
When I got home after the double cake whammy, my host mother brought me a mini takeout box.  What was inside?  CAKE.  Yes.  More cake.  I have no idea where this cake came from, maybe from heaven.  It was spongy and syrupy and sweet and topped off with thick frosting that had real coconut flakes in it.  Swoon.

Proof #5
Return to the Cake Shop: we got another cake by the slice, this time some kind of mystery cake that turned out to be delicious.  (That day I was having a particularly difficult time with all the dust and pieces of grit that kept blowing into my eyes, just a part of living in Guayaquil but also the perfect excuse for cake.)  Don't be fooled by my inadequate drawing, it was not a fruitcake.  It was one of those amalgamation cakes that has a little bit of everything - spices, carrots, what we determined to be coconut, etc. - and they weren't really floating in the cake so much as they composed the structure of the cake itself.  It's very difficult to describe the impact this one slice of cake had on us, but it was very, very thick and the tiny spoons they gave us were in no way up to the task of helping us to eat it.



That concludes my Treatise on the Cakes of Ecuador.  Now that these five proofs have been documented, I look forward to gathering more evidence and sharing it with you.  Come to Ecuador: We've got cake!