baking at high altitude, part 2

Last week I made a promise to myself that I would bake a carrot cake from scratch before my dearest Brazilian friend in the world got here last Friday afternoon. When Gisele eats my carrot cake, she makes me feel like I'm Martha Stewart (except without that pesky jail sentence and the snooty attitude).

I did some research and between what I learned from my research and an email that my friend Trisha who used to live here sent me, I was armed and ready.

The problem is that when you've been taught to bake by a mother who taught home economics for a very, very long time, you learn that baking is a science, a chemical process that requires the exact precise combination of leavening agents and flour and liquid and whatever else goes into such scientific chemical processes. (Science was not my forte.)

So if a recipe calls for one cup of flour, I was taught to spoon the flour into a dry measuring cup (a cup for dry ingredients, not a not-wet cup) and then level it off with the flat side of a knife. That's how I've always baked, namely because I don't have confidence in my baking abilities or skills to just add a little of this or a pinch of that.

So you can imagine how against the grain of me it goes to read these high-altitude adjustments that say things like "add 1-4 tablespoons of flour to your recipe". I'm sorry, but how do I know if I need 1 or 4 more tablespoons? You also have to add another egg, add less sugar, add less baking soda and powder, add less oil, and add more liquid. It's all incredibly and completely imprecise and that makes me crazy.

The other thing that makes no sense to me is that you have to add more flour and more liquid. Shouldn't those just cancel each other out and take you back to square one?

Anyway, I made the carrot cake with great trepidation. It might not be the best carrot cake I've ever made but it was pretty good if I do say so myself. Sadly, to repeat it will require a stroke of good luck or heavenly blessing because I just sort of willy-nilly measured and added and took away.

I will relish in this baking victory because it may not be mine again any time soon!

P.S. I will post soon on our amazing weekend with Gisele and Flavio, including what was probably the best meal I've ever had in my life at a restaurant here called Criterion. To start salivating now, go to www.criterion.com.co ! We had the tasting menu and it was quite simply divine. More to come!