Thanksgiving in the Highlands

The fourth Thursday of November is my all time most favoritest day of the whole year. It even tops the 25th of December in my book. Don't hate y'all :). This year I had the pleasure of spending Thanksgiving with people whom I am super grateful for aaaand we stayed in the middle of mountains where every morning and afternoon stunning views sat beyond every window in the house. What what!! How flippin awesome is that?! It's okay, if I were you I'd be jealous, too ;). Anyyyyywho. The drive up was rather turny-swervy-curvy. All the way to the top...

So to give our stomachs a break, we stopped at a pretty waterfall surrounded by tall tall trees of the rainforest. Ahh, step out of the car to be greeted by a breath of crisp, cool, and fresh mountain air. Not much tops that my frann. It seems rainforest mountain air even temporarily cures car sickness. Well for me at least...not so much for Zayah. Poor little guy.

Food. Food. Food. Oh how I love food. I'm fairly sure that one of my biggest struggles is between a love for food and fear of becoming extremely obese.

^^Above is a dish called Banana Leaf^^ (as if the banana leaf plate didn't already give it away;) To be honest I cant even tell you what those different piles of food are, but man are they ever so delicious! With maybe the exception of that reddish pile on the end...a tad bit too spicy for these taste buds.

Isaac getting a head start and putting on his Om Nom Nom face for a thanksgiving feast...

And we all know that the bigger the meal, the bigger the mess is that will be made by Isaiah the Destructionator. Might as well go ahead a try to save the carpet by laying out a towel...

Later on that week we took a trip to the Boh Tea Plantations, grabbed a bite to eat there, and this was our balcony view (I am referring to the rolling green hilly mini mountains of tea plants, not so much the random people who kept walking in front of my camera, so I just snapped the picture anyways)...

1.384 seconds before this picture was snapped, Immanuelle was probably looking directly at the camera wearing a big smile. But then again, probably not. She's sneaky like that. :o)

Cake for a king!

It's 4:00am. Eyes wide open. Being awake at this absurd hour for the third night in a row must be a sure sign that I need to post a blog, eh? So heeeeere it goes!

Okay, so our "Cupcake Neighbor" is quite a genius when it comes to baking and decorating cakes (as you are about to see). When we spent the day celebrating Hari Raya with her family, she asked if I wanted to learn how to make kek lapis, to which my reply was a big ole heck to the YEEEEES! Kek lapis is a cake made of a bunch of thin layers. Some are chocolate, some are blueberry, and some are pineapple, but all keke lapis (that I've tasted so far) are Uh-maze-ingly scrumptious! See all the teeny tiny layers?

We set a date and and I was informed to show up at her house at eleven o'clock and we would spend all day baking kek lapis. Weel, at ten o'clock that morning she showed up at our house with an excited twinkle in her eye. "Sorry Keylee, I must cancel kek lapis today. I have make birthday cake for Sultan and his nephew!" Helllllooooo...That. Is. HUGE!! Ya see, it's kind of a big deal when it's the State Sultan's birthday, and actually considered a state holiday. Downtown is decorated in lights and certain stores and offices are closed for the day. Like I said, big deal.

A nephew of the Sultan was turning one year old as well. So we got started on that cake first. Theme being Elmo/Sesame Street...

Mix mix mix mix. This is not your ordinary mixer, all heavy duty and professional and such. And apparently NOT intended to be ran by yours truly. It's still a mystery how I managed to sling chocolate cake batter all over the wall. Leave it to the white girl :)

(oh by the way, this picture was taken before I choco-fied the wall;)

Th two silver pot looking things below are the ovens. People here typically don't have ovens at all, they mostly cook on a griddle or stove top. Even though there were two ovens, each only held one 12x12 inch cake at a time which had to bake for an hour...

With 8 cakes having to be baked for Elmo's base, we had a lot of waiting before it could actually be put together. So we got to work on the details of the cake...

DING! Finally all the cakes were out of the oven and ready to be put together. Then came the fondant, airbrushing, big letters, little letters, Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch, Grover, lots of rearranging, and at last Elmo. Viola!

Oh but the fun didn't stop there! More and more cakes went into the oven. You thought 8 cakes was a lot for the Elmo cake? Oh no no, 24, 12x12inch cakes. TWENTY FOUR. Mr. Sultan was planning on a big party turn out and lots of cake hungry guests I suppose. We actually started icing the cake at 12:30am...

We worked on that cake through night. and day, and in and out of weeks, and almost over a year, to where only the wild things are. Okay, not reeeeeeally. Hour, after hour, after hour past and we finally finished. My camera died, so I have no pictures of the work in progress. But here is a picture of the finished product!

I wish there were a better picture showing the how huge this 60kg (132lb) cake really was. We got the cake finished a whole 30 minutes before our 6:00am deadline! I arrived back home at 5:45am, got cleaned up, threw some (warm) clothes in a bag, and we hit the road to the Highlands for Thanksgiving! Talk about being sleepy, whew. But worth it all, nonetheless. :)