Illustration by Kendra Gokey
Living abroad, it's expected that I'll miss out on events - weddings, baby showers, birthdays and even holidays. Access to my past life in the States is experienced as a voyeur who browses on-line photo albums, blogs and catches up on once a month Skype dates where a running list of topics to tackle sits beside me.
It's understood that Christmases will most likely be spent every year here in France (one holiday CDG to JFK hustle is more than enough for me in this lifetime), but one gathering that pains me to miss is funerals. Being so far from my family during a loss makes me feel uncharacteristically disconnected. This weekend was no exception, and experienced sporadic waves of emotions almost as if they were being transported directly from New York. Also in my family's case, funerals are the only time where everyone is actually nice. Weddings? Forget about it. That's war season. And don't even get me started on the arrival of new babies.
Despite the differences I have had with my family these past few months, believe it or not, I wanted to be with them this past weekend as they all said farewell to my uncle. Unfortunately having a Monday through Friday job that I heavily rely on for income, jetting back to New York for 48 hours is no longer possible, even with my mom's airline travel perks.
Knowing that I needed to be surrounded by family, instead of heading out to Fontainebleau on Sunday to celebrate Gilles' "Rock n' Roll" themed birthday, Séb arranged for us to spend the entire weekend out in the country.
Gilles who has always wanted cupcakes on his birthday used the opportunity of having a real live American in the house to whip up these tasty delights.
"Being American, you must know the recipe by heart," Gilles said leading me into the kitchen, "So I didn't bother printing out the recipe."
While I don't know the exact measurements by heart, everything is printed on the box, so I knew I'd manage just fine.
Famous last thoughts....
Gilles, who doesn't spare a single detail when he has a concept that he wants to see actualized, pulled out a large wooden wine box containing all of the accoutrement for the project. There were bags of mini marshmallows, sprinkles, pearled sprinkles, heart sprinkles, baseball bat sprinkles, edible glitter, food coloring, and magazine clippings of cupcakes that he would like to have replicated.
In another box to its left was flour, eggs, yeast, powdered sugar and vanilla beans.
Yeast? Vanilla beans?
Looking left, then right, then in front of the box and under, I realized...there was no pre-made mix. I was making these puppies from scratch....including the frosting.
Of course I was. How could I have possibly thought that I wouldn't be making them from scratch? Gilles would never make a trip into the city to spend 7 euros on a box of Duncan Hines at one of the obnoxiously overpriced American épiceries. Side note: I know a lot of people love them here but spending the equivalent of six bucks on a box of Stove Top to me is pure highway robbery. Call me cheap.
Okay, so for those of you who bake, you're probably chuckling at how simple the recipe is and that I don't need Duncan's help. But I was supposed to be flexing my American muscles by whipping up a batch of one of national treasures with ease. It was evident that that was not going to happen, and I was left with no choice but to confess to Gilles exactly how I "bake" cupcakes in the States: dumping a box of powder in a bowl, adding water and mixing.
"Does the "box" come with little men to turn on the oven too?" Gilles playfully mocked.
No. But it should.
We couldn't print out a recipe because SFR had cut their internet (which by default segued into the next project of getting the internet back up so we can work on Gilles' new blog), so we had to wing it by going on our baker's instincts.
In truth, the batter itself came out delicious; sweet, rich and creamy. The look of absolute horror consumed Gilles face when he caught me picking at a private bowl of raw batter that I had set aside for myself. I guess that doesn't happen here in France. What's the point of baking if you're not going to consume raw ingredients masked with copious amounts of sugar? Am I alone here?
While the batter itself was a success, the actual cupcakes....
Hmmm, how do I put this? I'll quote Gilles who commented several times "C'est catastrophe!" or "Oh là là, quel bordel!"
Off the top of my head, here are some things that went wrong:
Mistake #1: We thought it would be a good idea to add red food coloring to the batter to make pastel pink cupcakes. Cute, right? Well we got the food dye combination wrong, as well as forgetting to consider the already yellow batter and black dots from the vanilla bean. Instead of Marie Antoinette pink batter, we instead created a dull armadillo gray color (enter Steel Magnolias reference here).
Mistake #2: Because Gilles didn't have a proper cupcake baking mold, we first tried to use a muffin machine which in theory sounded like it could work. Well what the machine produced was dark gray deflated cupcake stubs that were steaming from the center with burnt black bottoms.
Mistake #3: Not adding egg whites to frosting for a fluffy texture. Our frosting, while it tasted decent, its consistency was gummy, runny and flat.
Mistake #4: Forgoing the entire idea of a cupcake baking sheet and filling up cupcake wrappers with batter and placing them in the oven. At least I knew better not to fill it to the top!
The finished product:
Bordel, indeed. Gilles figured if we merchandise them up a bit, no one would notice their dumpy shape, waxy frosting and gummy texture. He also served them several cocktails into the party. Smart move.
Cupcake catastrophe aside, spending the afternoon with Gilles while Séb napped in the guest room, and Françoise was at the coiffeur getting her hair done for Sunday's rocker party, was exactly what I needed. It reminded me a lot of some of the kitchen disasters I trapped my own father in back when I was a teenager, and wanted to prove that I was self-sufficient and could prepare a meal for two. He'd struggle for a bite or two of dry turkey burgers, runny eggs or clumpy rice before relieving us both with a treat at the downstairs pizza parlor.
It's not about the food, it's about the experience and last Saturday afternoon with Gilles was just that.
So now you must be wondering, what exactly did this Rock n' Roll themed birthday party entail? To be continued...
