Trip to Senegal- Day 6-8 Cooking advendures pt 2

With the mystery of the oven solved, I was sure that making cinnamon rolls was going to go a lot smoother than my dinner party had. Yep, wrong again.

This time the trouble came in the preparation stage. First of all, Arnie, being by himself means he doesn't own a whole lot of baking paraphernalia. Having made bread without a mixer before, I wasn't too daunted by this and I pressed forward.

I immediately came upon another inconvenience. Getting warm water. Usually I would get it from the tap. Here you can't do that and since Arnie doesn't have a microwave either, I ended up heating up filtered water on the stove. This, unfortunately, made it too hot and I had to temper it with room temp filtered water but I was still a little worried it was too hot. I was happy to see the yeast growing and was about to proceed with my next step when I realized that to get melted butter, I would have to melt that, also, on the stove.

As I am worrying about the heat killing my yeast, I then turn to my sugar and flour, which Arnie, in order to keep fresh here in the African heat and humidity, has kept in the freezer! So, I place my bets that the ingredients will balance themselves out and I make the dough and set it to rise.

By this time, Leone has come in to make her lunch and has taken interest in what I am doing. She asks me if I made the dough myself and what a cinnamon roll was. I showed her a picture and she was really excited to get the recipe.

It was really nice to have her in the kitchen with me. In fact she taught me better ways to use the stove and the oven. By her example, I learned that you didn't need to light the stove pilots at all but just take a match to the burner themselves when the knob is in the "Lite" position! This way, you are able to use the stove AND the oven at the same time!!! Also, she showed me how to light the oven pilot by opening the drawer under the oven instead of dismantling the oven!

I think she found me very entertaining to watch because it was as she was observing me that I realized that Arnie didn't have a rolling pin. At first I tried making due with a Nalgene water bottle while Arnie was scrambling in his storage for a better alternative. He ended up coming back with his baseball bat! It turned out to be a lot better than the bottle (after I had scrubbed it really well that is.)

With the rolls in the pans rising, I set about making the frosting. It was then that I realized that I had the challenge of making frosting with real butter completely by hand. Luckily, I had left the butter out so that it was room temperature or I'd be a lot worse off but it was still a difficult process. I ended up having to scrub my hands really well and just going in with both hands. This helped warm up the butter and combine it with the powdered sugar. As it was, I didn't end up putting all the allotted amount of sugar in before it became too difficult and I decided to just add the milk to make it spreadable.

So I am happy to say after all of the trouble I went through, the cinnamon rolls came out beautifully! Phew! I understand, now, why Arnie has been avoiding cooking!