Twenty-nine years of crazy cakes

Well, another year has come and since we are once again on the road we are again baking in a random kitchen. But Mekayla's great birthday cake tradition continues. We took over her cousin Pamela's kitchen for the day and then Mekayla, her Dad, and I cooked throughout the afternoon and into the evening.

This time the cake was a flourless chocolate torte. We of course decorated with a lot of fruit and chocolate shavings. And to kiwi-ify it another part of the cake was made from Grace's Pavlova recipe. A Pavlova is essentially a type of meringue, but Australia and New Zealand argue over who actually invented this version. Grace swore us to secrecy and provided us with her secret family recipe for this event.



Now to answer the big question everyone is asking: What shape is it this year? Naturally the shape had to capture a bit of our time in New Zealand and the idea that we have been traveling a lot. So the shape this year is a Maori canoe, called a waka.



One of the great things about the word "waka" is it is now used in Maori for as the root word for any mode of transportation. So the word for plane translates as "canoe of the sky". And the word for car "waka whenua" [wa-ka fen-u-a] translates to "canoe of the earth". We gave our new car the nickname "waka whenua" also.



Before dinner we also continued to hone some of our Indian cooking skills and made what turned out to be a quite good vegetarian meal.


So our journey across the US has begun. We are now in San Jose, and today we leave for some camping in Yosemite.