Have Bundt, Will Travel

Have you ever taken items from your personal kitchen on vacation with you?   Last week I took my Bundt pan on my vacation and here is my story:

My extended family headed to a lovely resort in the Brainerd Lakes area of Minnesota for a week of swimming, fishing, golfing and relaxing as we do every year. But this year, we’d be also celebrating my mother’s 65th birthday.

Even though the resort has a fully stocked kitchen, I knew I wouldn’t have the tools and pans I wanted to make a great cake.  Not to mention that I didn’t want spend the whole day inside baking and decorating a cake when I was near a beautiful lake on a hot summer day.

So I took my Bundt pan on vacation.  And I ran into a few challenges!

Challenge #1 – The cabin didn’t have a mixer.   Not even an old-school, rotary hand beater.

So I began to mix by hand. With a fork.  Five minutes later, with a very sore arm, someone gave me the bright idea to try mixing in the VitaMix (yes, I brought that on vacation too).  Bad idea.  After scraping the lumpy batter in, it was too thick to run.  So I had to scrap it all back out and keep mixing by hand.

Still a bit lumpy, I loaded the batter in the pan and baked it up.

Challenge #2 – I must have forgotten to buy an extra lemon for the glaze (or more likely – someone used it in their cocktails!).  So I used lime.

Challenge #3 – No cake platter or large plates. I improvised with the plastic lid from large bowl.

Despite the challenges of working in the cabin kitchen, this stunning cake was easy and impressive with a simple glaze.  Exactly as the invention of the Bundt pan was designed – to make a beautiful cake with ease.  Including on vacation.

Have you ever taken items from your personal kitchen on vacation with you?   What fun challenges and creative solutions did you try?