Biscuits!

Baking in Botswana intimidated me enough that it took me almost 2 months to try it out. However, I feared unnecessarily. Above is a tray of my most recent creations- no-bakes and peanut butter biscuits (here, no one says "cookie"). They may not be gourmet, but they have gotten rave reviews from friends, co-workers, house-mates, etc. I made the batches pictured here for the Missions Conference at my church, but when I arrived to help with the Face the Nation brunch (for 150 people), we realized we needed more baked goods, so they were served early.

So what was so intimidating about baking in Botswana? Well, the ingredients are all a bit different- white and brown sugars are coarsely ground (moist, packable brown sugar does not exist, as far as I can tell), good coconut, chocolate chips, and baking soda are hard to find, quantities and temperatures are in metric/ Celsius, and it is SO dry here that things get 'crispy' in a jiffy. Thankfully, the internet had the answers I needed to overcome some of these barriers including tricks like allowing your moist ingredients to soak with the sugars until it dissolves and using AllRecipes.com which converts any recipe to metric with the click of a button. Hooray!