Bake Around the World: Write in the Kitchen: Grenada, Spice Cake and Sunscreen

This year, I am endeavoring on a monthly challenge to bake around the world; write in the kitchen. The idea is inspired by Erin, my friend and author of This Footprint blog who participated in a cooking challenge for every country. Each month, I will randomly select a country and make a vegan version of a traditional dessert from that nation. And, each month, I will put intentional time into writing at least one non-Smile Project related piece. I look forward to expanding my confectionary acumen and baking around the world. And I look forward to sitting closer to home, writing for myself.  

As friends heard about this baking challenge and looked at the pictures of last month’s Gabonese beignets, the immediate question was “what country is next?” I decided the selection process could be a fun way to share this journey with others so—come February while riding the ferry down the East River with out of town friends—I pulled up a random country generator and let my friend do the honors: Grenada. 

Grenada is an island nation in the eastern Caribbean about 100 miles north of the Venezuelan coast. There were several attempts in the 1500s and 1600s from European countries to colonize the small island but those were unsuccessful due to resistance from the native Carib population on the island. Then, in 1650, France succeeded in taking control of the island, surrendering it to Britain in 1763, recapturing it in 1779, and then restoring it to Britain in 1783. In 1967, Grenada became a self governing state in association with Great Britain and then an independent nation on February 7, 1974. (Source: Brittanica.)

Unlike last month’s country (Gabon) I actually came in with a little insight. In a former job, I had a colleague around my age who was Grenadan and she and I became good friends. In 2017, I watched her be crowned Miss Grenada USA [Collegiate] Pageant at the first pageant I’d ever been to—and the first my rock star friend had ever competed in. For her talent, she played steel drums beautifully. I remember sitting in our office and looking at photos of her Carnival outfits. 

So despite Grenada being over 2,000 miles from New York City, I did feel like I had a little more context for this baking challenge and next began diving into recipes. I found an amazing blog called Spice Island Cooking. The author and cook of the blog, Cecilia, named her blog for the fact that Grenada is known as the Isle of Spice “as we have a wide variety of spices such as cinnamon, saffron, cloves, etc.” I found myself getting lost in her website and recipes and watching videos of her making various treats. I really recommend it for anyone wanting to get into some Grenadian dishes. 

Eventually, feeling inspired by the “Isle of Spice” connection, I decided to make her Grenadian Spice Cake. As always, I had to make some slight adjustments to make it vegan (flax seed for eggs; vegan butter; and homemade “buttermilk”) but overall, it was a fairly simple bake. The fun part was dying the batter to red, green, and yellow—to symbolize the nation’s flag. I swirled the top of the cake, giving a marbled approach, and left the bottom in sectioned colors giving the finished product a really unique look.

The flavor was very spice-y. Not in the sense of “hot” but in the sense of “wow, this is filled with a lot of flavor!” I have a theory that the lime juice (something I wouldn’t normally think to combine with those spices) brings out new textures in the flavor. All I know for sure is that one morning before work I made a delicious cake and in the afternoon cut into it while the Grenadian national anthem played over my speakers in the background. 

As is my new routine, I needed to pair my spice cake with some sort of intentional, non-Smile, non-work related writing. For whatever reason, as I sat down with the intention to write about one thing, my mind kept drifting back to one another—one of my favorite pieces of writing, “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young.” It was written by Mary Schmich in 1997 for the Chicago Tribute as a kind of “just for fun” commencement address. It gained even more popularity when it was adapted into a song “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” by Baz Luhrmann.

I had the idea to weave a story around each of the words in the original piece while adding additional discourse around the state of the self help industry. It’s been a while since I worked on a piece with direct ties to something else and it’s the first time I’ve ever played with a piece that has meant so much to me throughout my life. It was not what I expected to write nor what I sat down to do, but it was a fun thought exercise and I’m grateful for it. 

January: to beignets and book proposals 

February: to spice cake and sunscreen