By: Jane Tabet-Kirkpatrick
A picture of the finished product, made by the author and her friend.
1. Separate egg whites and beat with ¼ cup sugar until stiff. Set aside.
2. To celebrate the United States vs. Netherlands World Cup game, I hosted a small gathering, calling the recipe and its protagonist to the stage. Antonia—a nineteen-year-old from Kerspleben, Germany who speaks English, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, and Latin—offers a unique glimpse into the world of German desserts. This week, she had decided to make Donauwelle, a cake composed of cherries, chocolate, vanilla cream, and German rap music.
While Antonia and I set up our kitchen, she requested someone make her a Spezi, a mixture of half Coke and half lemonade (in a pinch Fanta de Naranja will do). Being too stubborn and cheap to purchase a hand mixer, we placed the egg whites in a Tupperware and shook them...vigorously. Then, we quickly heated a honey brie, serving it with jam and toast. Using our cheesy delicacy as the perfect bait, we proceeded to guilt everyone into helping us "beat" the egg whites.
The groans from my living room were palpable. The Netherlands had scored their first goal in under ten minutes (but hey, at least we didn't suffer the same fate as Germany).
3. Cream the egg yolk, sunflower oil, and ¾ cups sugar. Then mix in the flour, baking powder, and water.
4. Antonia’s youth is not a reliable indicator of her maturity. She is a living opposition to the time-old, “youth is wasted on the young" trope. Even though she ironically recently received her first paycheck ever, it seems like she has already lived more lives than most. She attended several high school study abroad programs, one of which included Tenerife. She then decided to stay on the island and work before attending university. She lives with three other Fulbrighters in Santa Cruz, the capital of the island, about a 20-minute bus ride from La Laguna.
Apart from being incredibly independent at such a young age, Antonia exhibits a high level of English competency. Her own educational experience really puts into perspective our two competing systems. The United States exists entirely within its bubble of linguistic hegemony. Antonia and I often discuss the potential universe we would have lived in without her English skills—one in which a friendship wouldn't have existed.
As we bake, Antonia curates a remarkable playlist of German songs new and old. As a joke, she places a photo of the infamous quote, “Mr. President—tear down that wall.” A significant indication of language fluency lies in the ability to make others laugh. Being able to navigate and find humor in another language requires several moving parts. And aside from the obvious use of one's comprehension and speaking skills, there is also a demand for an understanding of culture, history, unannounced nuances, and, above all, timing. Antonia displays a mastery of English humor, and her current linguistic abilities are already what many hope to achieve in their whole lives.
5. Divide dough in half. In one half, add cocoa powder and milk. Divide the whipped egg whites evenly and pour them into both of the cake batters.
6. Becoming friends with Antonia, I've thought a lot about multilingualism, but also about communication in general– how much of life do we miss out on simply due to our narrow communication abilities? Through my language-learning journey, I have had the pleasure of being exposed to brilliant writers, storytellers, lyricists, and other language benders. As they wield and forge their own understanding of the world through linguistic tools different from my own.
This ability to create meaning from a series of morphological phenomenons was readily apparent as Antonia made me pronounce words from the German recipe. “You are going to learn,” she said. As my mouth moved around the unfamiliar terrain of sounds, I found it difficult to contort my English-dominant mouth. And there stood Antonia with an ability to navigate the sea of representing graphics into concrete meaning that resulted in a **spoiler alert** wonderful cake. (She gave up her quest to teach me about an hour in.)
7. Add yellow cake batter to the bottom of the cake pan. Make sure it is an even layer. Then, from the chocolate batter, add “Klecks” on top of the yellow batter—this will help create the marbled effect—use all the batter.
8. German is not the only communicative fault of mine that I have become increasingly familiar with. November introduced me to an unpleasant feeling, one of disconnection. Despite the physical distance from the States, there is another function of physics that is enemy number one, time. Being 6-8 hours ahead of New Mexico means my old world is nocturnal. What happens while I sleep, what do I miss, and who misses me? I’m left to pick up the pieces of home in the morning—something I have slowly lost interest in doing.
In the spirit of being honest, my own lack of communication skills has taken its toll. Friendships have changed and relationships have shifted. As the holidays approach, I realize how much time has passed and how quickly my ability to keep two lives afloat has faded. I find my connections back home fading a bit every day. I'm forced to remind myself that I do not have two lives, I only have this one. My journey abroad has been a cocktail of two parts wonder, one part uncertainty, and now I find in it a twinge of bitterness. Be it for better or worse.
9. Add strained cherries and press into the mixed cake batters.
10. Florence and The Machine, an artist I have tickets to see in the UK, has a relatable lyric: “everything I thought I knew, has fallen out of view… in this blindness, I’m condemned to.” The song, “Cassandra,” is centered around the Greek myth of a woman who refuses the god Apollo’s advances, after which he fates her to tell true prophecies but never be believed. Florence’s version of the song meditates on the idea of Cassandra's tongue being cut out, depriving her of her versions and leaving her with no way to communicate. With her abilities gone, she feels herself fading into blindness. What is to become of her now?
Relating to this song is my own sense of fading, my faltering to reach out to others has deprived me of a clear vision for my future. There is also a sense of guilt that the relationships I have let slip through my fingers may never intertwine their hands with mine again. Even if they do, will they fit the same way as before? I’m reminded of a conversation I had with an English professor at the University about her moving from Madrid to Tenerife, and how noticeably quieter life had gotten. She reflected upon her recent visits back to the city, “I never got used to the noise again.”
Positively correlated with this fading out, there is also a sense of fading in. In the past four months, I have created an entirely new community. A whole new bag of characters have presented themselves in my life. Painting self-portraits for each other, reflecting on our lives through a new lens, often I find myself wondering how I lived without them. Strangers becoming artists becoming aficionados. It’s something I haven’t, and will never, put into words—the freedom of being untethered from reputation.
11. Bake for 25 minutes at 180C.
12. As the wrestling match with my own place in the world continues, the abstract idea of “finding myself” remains the ring leader. Abroad, I’ve tried to be cognizant of what I am projecting from this experience–posting about the struggles of finding housing and documenting online my fleeting feelings of isolation. I have often joked about the Eat, Pray, Love complex, and have actively tried to avoid over-romanticizing the world abroad. Peddling the agenda that one needs some kind of foreign, earth-shattering experience to “reveal the true self" seems hokey, out of touch, and tiptoes around the borders of classism. Even further, I have begun to reject the notion of “finding oneself” on its face, relegating it to nothing more than a banal self-help book title. Coming into a new philosophy, I think “finding yourself” is too reductive, the idea goes too far in accepting our place in the universe as tangible, rather than ever-evolving.
Rejecting this "finding oneself" scheme has freed me from the exhausting attempts to constantly qualify my life. During much of this experience, I have found myself in the precarious circumstance of being temporary and permanent all at once. "Finding myself" in a permanent state of change. Finding comfort within impermanence may be the new frontier.
13. Prepare Vanilla Cream:
Mix vanilla pudding powder, sugar, and 8 tbsp of milk
Bring 1 liter of milk to a low boil stirring constantly
Add mixture to milk
Wait for the mixture to thicken stirring constantly
Transfer to a bowl once slightly thickened, put plastic wrap on top, and place in the fridge
After cooling, pour the cream on top of the cake and transfer it back to the fridge to continue thickening.
14. November rushed by, and without warning the descent into Christmas encapsulated us into a tropical snow globe. La Laguna underwent a transformation. One minute we were celebrating Halloween, skipping Thanksgiving, then without pause, Wisemen were hanging from balconies. La Laguna decorated the entire town with lights, presents, nativities, Christmas trees, and—most peculiarly—butterflies (Spanish Word of the Day: mariposas). The annual turning on the lights is signified by a giant party in the city known as La Noche en Blanco. It seemed as though the entire population of the island descended into our tiny town just as quickly as I waved goodbye to November.
15. For La Noche en Blanco, the Cuadrilátero—better known as “the Cuadri”—was the site of several live musical performances. This public space with bars and clubs is not even a one-minute walk from our apartment. This makes our place a popular spot to begin the night…much to my pleasure. Starting with a Spanish classic, Tinto de Verano (a hint of summer made of vino and lemon refresco), we then continued the night by navigating the streets packed with people, stopping at a baked potato truck for something quick to eat before our night truly began.
In Spain, everything operates on a later schedule—you eat dinner at 9 and leave for the fiesta around 12-1. It’s common not to even end your night until roughly 3-5 in the morning. As you may imagine, for us Americans this causes many logistical problems. The passings of La Noche En Blanco are hazy and not fully committed to memory. However, the night eventually ended, as our nights have a pattern of doing, at La Bola Ocho bar. There we play foosball, or futbolin, for .50€ a game.
16. Chocolate Topping
i. After the cake has cooled completely and the pudding has continued to firm, begin heating Dr. Oetker Cobertura Negra, a hardshell chocolate coating, in warm water on the stove.
ii. Once the packets have heated to a liquid form, remove the cake from the fridge and evenly layer the chocolate on top.
iii. Put in the fridge and wait for the chocolate to harden.
iv. Enjoy (!)
17. November, despite its quickness, opened my eyes to more of the island. I rented a car with some friends and got the chance to explore more of my backyard. I have found that my “tiny” island is a host to one of the most diverse microclimate systems. Every twenty minutes in the car a new environmental niche reveals itself. On the pilgrimage to the volcano, Teide, the highest point in Spain, one quickly becomes familiar with this diversity.
As the trip begins, the tropical vegetation traces the highway and quickly dissipates. There is a lookout spot where the pine forest opens up and a clear picture of the ocean emerges. As we enter deeper into the pine forest turns to a desert landscape, I find myself sounding like my dad as I repeat, “this looks like New Mexico,” about 1,000 times. Slowly making our way up to volcanic rocks and arid wind we are finally able to see the very tip of the volcano, surrounded by clouds. This paradise born of systemic eruption explodes with every mile traveled. It unfolds quickly and brilliantly, forcing one to take notice of their surroundings at every given moment.
18. As I continue to explore the island while building my own collection of recipes and friends, I am continuously reminded about the importance of communication, and how integral our languages are to preserving recipes and traditions while guiding our relationships. Exploring Canarias, this extraordinary cultural niche has enlightened my life. Even further, it has opened doors for so many new opportunities. My ability to communicate in another language (or their ability to communicate with me) is a gift I find myself continually grateful for.
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