Cake Hour Cackle: Bolivian Bye Bye and Arabian Au Revoir

Today’s cake hour was determined by the sort of departure of one of our former research assistants turned graduate student. Actually she technically left the lab to become a grad student a while ago but was still involved with the research. She also did some more work as part of her grad rotations but the day had to come when she would be assigned to a lab and it was not ours. So we said sort of goodbye because she will probably end up hanging around again at some point. Since her heritage is Bolivian her heretofore mentor decided our departee should be feted at a Bolivian restaurant.

Time to send her out into the real world.

Postres bolivianos to go!

Great spread!

A couple of things are going on here!

They had a nice lunch and for the cake hour farewell they bought a bunch of desserts from the restaurant. The specialties included the obligatory flan and a tres leches cake or torta de tres leches. This is a sponge cake—in some recipes, a butter cake—soaked in three kinds of milk: evaporated milk, condensed milk, and heavy cream.which translates as three milks. Heaven knows how they came up with that idea but it has been around since the Middle Ages. The third treat was described as mango mousse cake.

Are you a flan fan?

Three milks cake or torta de tres leches!

Is it a mousse or a cheesecake?

Not a bad little selection at all!

We have had flan and even a flan competition before so we are very versed in what it should be. This one was very good and even met the expectations of some diehard flan fans. The tres leches cake was the best we have had probably because it was made more correctly than what we have had in the past. The mango mousse didn’t really taste like mango mousse but had the consistency of a mango cheesecake. With that in mind it made for a tasty cake but would be a very pasty mousse. We will assume that it was indeed a cheesecake.

When it comes to dessert ¡Viva Bolivia!

The final 10 second shot with the gang!

So the Bolivian theme worked well to bid farewell to our colleague. We were also saying au revoir from one of our colleagues with an Arabic heritage. Of course these treats had nothing to do with that but there was no baklava to be had. So we just included him in the celebration and sent him off to his residency in beautiful and stimulating Roanoke, Virginia. Au revoir, notre ami and we wish you great success and great fun in VA!