How do I explain this week? I mentioned that I joined a choir here, The Oxford Alternotives (pronounced alternatives... it is a visual pun only). we are in a competition tonight and we will be performing three pieces: 'California Dreamin'' by the Mama's and the Papa's, 'Don't Blame it on the Boogie' by the Jackson 5 and last but not least 'Don't Stop Me Now' by Queen. We had auditions for the 'Don't Stop Me Now' solo last Sunday and after two rounds and roughly 25 minutes of debate by the choir (for which I was not present) I was chosen as the soloist (!?!!!).
This week I have been singing this song constantly in my head. We also learned all of the completely awesome-show-stopping choreography this week. So tonight I will be rocking it out Freddie Mercury style for a small panel of judges and a small audience at the ICCAs. Learning the lyrics would not be a problem for most people who had childhoods that involved popular music. I missed out on Queen the first time around and was introduced to them ala Bohemian Rhapsody by Wayne and Garth.
I will let you know how that goes...
I n other news I baked my favorite cake yesterday, the Chocolate Stout Cake that Spoons kindly introduced me to during graduate school. One of the coolest people I have met here in Oxford, my lab mate Viknesh, is going back to Malaysia after finishing his PhD. We were having a surprise party for him in Bicester so I wanted to make this cake. First off it is a Bundt cake. This means, for the uninitiated that it has a hole in the center. I didn't have a bundt cake pan here so I started asking around in the lab... No one knew what I was talking about. Responses:"Why would you put a hole in a cake?"
"What about the stodge? We love our stodge!"
Stodge? This is the heavy delicious sweet stuff in the center of a cake. Of course the point of chocolate stout cake is to be ALL STODGE. I did eventually find a bundt cake pan but... it wasn't easy. The next tricky ingredient was molasses. It had not occurred to me that this would be hard to find. I prefer Black strap molasses for the recipe and the only place you can find any molasses here at all are in health food stores. The English have a syrupy textured cane sugar derivative called treacle. I am still not really clear on what is supposed to be so healthy about molasses but I found them.
M y last adventure was the oven. I had not attempted to bake here before and after Viknesh had once looked at my oven and made some slightly negative remark I have been a little wary of the thing. I needed to pre-heat the oven while I got the cake ready and I was shocked to see that the temperature on the oven only went up to 250. I needed to bake this cake at 350! "Oh no! This may take much longer etc etc. "
H a Ha HA!
I sincerely hope that I am not the only poor little American to look at my recipe book and forget that the oven I am using is in Celsius, not Fahrenheit. Luckily my room mate James came down and I asked him about the oven. He saw my problem immediately and kindly reminded me that the oven was in Celsius. I am, after all, living in England now.
