Two weeks ago we spent the afternoon with fellow Brits celebrating the jubilee with our own pudding competition in N'Djamena. In the two weeks leading up to the competition, Matt had us sampling various mango jelly and mango custard concoctions and even trialled one variation on our visiting guests and asked for feedback! In the end we settled on 'Meringo' - a fresh mango base, followed by mango custard, crushed meringue and topped with whipped cream and spun sugar. We made the mango and meringue parts in advance and on the morning of the competition, I sweltered whilst trying to spin sugar in 40 degrees (turns out working with melted sugar is even more frustrating than working with chocolate). We then had a slight disaster on arrival at Guinbor as the cream was off and it curdled as Matt tried to whip it. Luckily friends had some spare cream and our desert was rescued.
Bethan also designed her own desert, going for the ultimate challenge of an entirely ice-based desert in the middle of the day during hot season! Her creation featured ice lollies consisting of pineapple (dyed blue), mango and watermelon & mint, made to look like the Chadian flag. They were seated on a disc of ice, on which she attempted to carve and colour the union jack with food colouring so that the whole thing looked (somewhat) like a crown.
In total there were 10 deserts in the competition, including a Tower of London inspired cheesecake, ice-cream filled cupcakes and an impressive construction of mango filled profiteroles formed into a 3D crown. An independent panel of judges from the USA (who conveniently live at Guinibor) assessed the taste, appearance and use of local ingredients before declaring the winning dessert to be a Mango and raspberry baked cheese cake.
This week we had a rare night out, making the most of willing babysitters living next door to us, to attend the British Embassy's Platinum Jubilee event. There were about 150 people attending the celebration at one of the local hotels. The entrance was decked in arches of purple and white balloons (and plenty of security so we wimped out of trying to take a photo of the entrance). An evening of canapes, live music, speeches, and an enormous cake followed.
It was the first event to be organised by the British embassy and they pulled out all the stops to make it a memorable night. We mingled with members of the armed forces, Chadian government ministers and foreign ambassadors..well we could've done, mostly we enjoyed the company of our friends and people that I know through work!
