Life’s a piece of cake

As I indicated in my last post, Turkish cakes are quite the phenomenon. Referred to as “pasta,” these delicacies have confounded me a bit since arrival. Countless little stores have displays showing off their arrays of different cakes, most sizes that we would call “personal sized” in the US. These displays remind me a bit of the ones you encounter in China; however, few of the cakes are decorated with slices of dragon fruit, kiwi, or lychees here.

Serendipitously, after I made my last post on Thursday, Friday not only brought a chance to wear jeans to the office, but also yet another cake at the office. Seeing it in front of me, I knew that my post on cakes was going to be next. This one was an ice cream cake with thin wafer-like layers making up the top, bottom, and a middle layer that separated the two different ice cream flavors (Each hardly a 4th of an inch thick). The bottom 1/3 of each slice was a layer of rich fudgy chocolate ice cream, and the top 2/3 was vanilla. It was probably my favorite of the cakes I’ve had thus far; however, some of the others have been quite excellent as well.

One has almond slivers on the outside with chocolate icing, two layers of chocolate cake, and a middle layer of icing, chocolate chips, and the occasional cherry. At this point, I will interject that putting fruit in or on cakes is evidently quite popular here. Another one that I had had layers of vanilla cake, chocolate cake, bananas, cherries, and a layer of what tasted like Bavarian cream…. It was definitely the most interesting of the cakes I’ve had thus far. (In case I haven’t already mentioned it, Friday’s cake was either number 5 or 6 in Turkey almost all of which were eaten at the office).

It’s difficult to really describe, but cakes here are not what we think of in the US. They don’t typically have that moist, spongy, well… cake-like quality that we normally think of. Sometimes they have wafer-like layers like in the ice cream cake, and sometimes they are more like the consistency of sourdough bread (although, generally tasting considerably more like a desert). I have a strong inclination that I have not eaten my last piece of cake in Turkey, so only time will tell what other peculiarities that may arise with these confections. I will, however, keep you posted if any pop up.

In other, non-cake related news, I now have tickets to fly to Greece on July 8th; thus, my International adventure will be getting more international soon. We’ll have to see what adventures country number 18 will bring. Considering I’ll be there with AJ (a friend from UNC who is a classical archaeology major for those of you who do not know), I’m sure it will be profound, enlightening, and sophisticated with a healthy dash of delightfully ridiculous (I’m also hoping things will be abnormally cheap since Greece’s economy isn’t exactly thriving right now – I’ve been to plenty of developing countries, but an economically dwindling one, never). Pantheon, here we come...