Baking with the Gyesi Family

So I love baking, right?!  Well I didn't really think I was going to get to do much baking while in Ghana and till recently, I didn't really know if they had any sweets...I was SO wrong!  Not only did I find a place where I can get delicious chocolate (a store I now visit quite frequently), I got to do some baking!  

One evening, I was chatting with my family and we somehow got onto the topic of sweets.  After trying to explain to them what a brownie is and learning that my host mother loves cake and pretty much all sweets, I started telling them about my family's secret chocolate chip cookies and how absolutely delicious they are.  They were very interested and said that I should make some!  So I went to a few supermarkets with my host brother and got all the ingredients I would need and then we baked...

Here is the cookie batter.  It smelled (and tasted) SO good!  It wasn't the same as the ones I make at home, but they were still very good.

Here are the anxious observes waiting to be the first to try my cookies!

My sister Asabea watching the cookies in the oven.  Unfortunately we burnt the first few, but I'm pretty sure they still got eaten..

Everyone was very happy and excited!

And here was the final product!  Yummy, yummy, yummy!

I had to leave before they were finished, so I left the rest of the baking to my trusty sidekick Asabea.  She did a great job finishing them!

So that evening, we all ate cookies for dessert!  Everyone liked them except the little guy...

He would not even try them!  Seriously (and I am not making this up), he started wimpering and crying when we brought the cookies close to him!!!  I have NEVER met a kid who is afraid of cookies, but for real, Kofi is!  And so now...if he is ever misbehaving (which is often), the family will threaten him with cookies!  They put a chunk of a cookie in a little baggie and will bring it out whenever he is being bad!  He is SO scared of it and stops misbehaving whenever the cookie chunk comes out!  I am dead serious.  We all think it is the funniest thing and sometimes Emmanuel will joke around with Kofi and pretend he has a cookie behind his back--Kofi starts wimpering and says, "no, no, no!"  Poor kid!  If only he would just try the cookie, he'd realize it's actually quite a treat!

So...the sweets continue...my host mom knows that I like candy a lot so she decided to show me how to make homemade toffy (candy).  All it requires is a lot of sweetened condensed milk and a little bit of oil.

You bring it to boil and stir for a very long time.

The color eventually starts changing to brown and the consistency becomes thicker.

Once it is ready, you pour it out onto a cutting board to role it out.

It doesn't look too appetizing now because of the shape and color, but the final product is delicious!

Then you cut it in whatever shape you want and let it sit for just a little bit to cool.

And there you have it...toffy!

And that wraps up another episode of  "Baking with the Gyesi Family!"  Thanks for tuning in!