My mom's birthday is in March, so upon learning that our lodging would have a full kitchen, my sister and I decided to try to keep the tradition going with the famous Suzy McMullen birthday cake. Our parents arrived a few days earlier, so my mom called us to see what kind of breakfast food, snacks, and other groceries she should get. The trouble with trying to make a surprise cake is that the ingredients are a little telling...one can't really ask for flour, cocoa powder, and buttermilk without evoking cake imagery. The greater trouble was that J and I weren't listed as drivers on the rental car, so we couldn't sneak away to the grocery store on our own. Here's how we did it:
MOM: "Think about what you want for breakfast. What can I get you from the store?"
ME: "Uhh...can we make biscuits since we have a kitchen?"
MOM: "Sure. What else?"
ME: "Uhh...I think J said she wanted to make pancakes."
MOM: "Really? And biscuits?
ME: "Yep. She really likes pancakes."
MOM: "Okay...."
ME: "And I miss when you make me hot chocolate. Mine never turns out right. Can you get some cocoa?"
While we do love biscuits and pancakes, and it's true that my hot chocolate never turns out right, we managed to get every ingredient required for the chocolate cake recipe, dispersed across a few other family favorites.
I got in a couple days before J did and scoped out the bakeware situation. We were looking for a small cake or brownie pan, but all they had was a few sheet pans, a giant silicone bundt pan (which neither of us knew how to adjust the recipe for), and -- hurray! muffin tins. We decided to make individual cakes instead of one big one.
It's challenging enough cooking in a kitchen that is not your own, more challenging still in a kitchen that, while impressively equipped for a vacation home, lacks certain things you take for granted at home (such as a little hand mixer for whipping cream, multiple sets of measuring cups, etc.). Take that to 8,500 ft. above sea level, and you've got yourself a high-altitude baking challenge. Fortunately this site told us how to make adjustments: high-altitude baking is dramatically different because of the change in atmospheric pressure: liquids evaporate faster, dry ingredients are drier, and these things affect not only measurements but also oven temperature and bake time.
We were anxious that they weren't going to rise properly, or that they would fall after coming out of the oven, or would be dry, but amazingly, our little cakes turned out fantastically (if I do say so myself). Our little adjustments seemed to work just right, and baking them in little, individual poufs made the edges delightfully crispy. We hand-whipped some cream and sliced strawberries, serving up a surprise (early) birthday treat after dinner.
And to give you a sense of how high up we were, here's the highest skiiable point in Snowmass:
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