Introducing Brownies to My Cameroonian Family

September 24th, 2014 by | Tags: | No Comments »

My host brother and mother both enjoyed the brownie.

My host brother and mother both enjoyed the brownie.

One of my many responsibilities of my job is to teach Cameroonians about my American culture. My host family and I’ve exchanged many conversations about our cultural differences which included family roles, jobs, schools, and food. My host brother asked me many questions about the US, and I happily answered them. Because I noticed that the Cameroonian food is quite different from the American food, I thought it’d be a good idea to introduce them to some American food since they have never visited the US.

In my head, I went through a list of food I cooked on regular basis in the US and picked one that had ingredients that I could likely easily find in the village. The first one that came to my mind was brownies. All I needed was eggs, flour, sugar, butter, vanilla and cocoa.

When I proposed to my family last weekend that I’d like to make brownies for them and asked them where I could find “cocoa.” One of my host sisters went out and brought back a coconut. Yikes! I have to say that while I did feel badly for the miscommunication, it is a common problem that people often encounter when communicating in a foreign language.

We then went out together to the convenient store which we call “la boutique” to find the ingredients for the brownies. While I couldn’t find cocoa, I got dark chocolate candy instead.

We made the brownie as soon as we returned to the house. My host siblings tasted the batter and gave the expression as if they were in love with the taste. One of my host sisters kissed her finger once she licked the batter with her finger. While my host family has an oven, they ran out of gas and so, we took the unbaked brownie to their relative’s home where we used a stove. We turned the stove into an oven by taking a huge pot and putting the unbaked brownie with the pan inside the pot and the pot lid on the pot. It cooked the brownie beautifully except it took a little longer than it normally would take. I have now learned that I can still cook many things that require an oven on a stove instead!

The taste was perfect. It was certainly slightly different, but it still has the same great rich chocolate chewy taste. My host family loved it, as the brownies were gone within 24 hours. I told them that for the following weekends, I’d like to make them chocolate chip cookies and snickerdoodle cookies.

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