Rafting with Cake.

A friend of mine decided that she wanted to do something a bit unique for her birthday so she invited a group of us to try white water rafting with her. Of course I volunteered to bring the birthday cake.

The Cake

Rather than doing a traditional cake and then wondering if the icing would survive the trip I decided to do a coconut and pecan pound cake. It's a cake I've made a few times in other pans but I thought it was the perfect time to treat myself to a silicone bundt cake pan (which I had been thinking about for the apparent ease of storage and clean-up). The cake ended up being slightly more oblong that round but I think I'm the only one who would notice. Clean-up was such a breeze that I'm going back to the shop to treat myself to the jumbo muffin pans too.

You can find the cake recipe here. My oven doesn't cook very evenly so I need to turn the cake at about 25 minutes and the last few times I've made it I've poked holes in the cake before drizzling the syrup on, then wrapped the cake in plastic wrap until it was ready to serve the next day. It's very dense and easy to eat with your fingers which makes it great for camping or picnics. It's great in winter fresh out of the oven with a hot drink or  served cold in summer with strawberries and whipped cream.

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The Rafting

We booked our trip through Destiny River Tours in Campbell River. They were quite willing to let me bring a cake and even offered to order one through a local bakery if I didn't want to bake one (can you imagine!?). We were on the water about six hours including lunch and the cake break. Our guides (Jaimie and Kaitlin) were obviously competent and the instructions given at the start of the trip were very clear and simple so it was very easy to just enjoy the trip. Even when I got bumped off the raft into the river I knew just what to do and it ended up being so fun and exhilarating it was tempting to go over again! We all ended up soaked from head to toe but the right gear kept us all warm. We had hoped to see bear or elk but all our laughter scared them away. We did see many eagles, a few turkey vultures, lots of mergansers, some sparrows, and a kingfisher. We all enjoyed the trip so much we are planning to do a longer trip on the same river sometime and go snorkeling with the salmon in the fall. The next time we raft I'm going to trade my paddle in for a camera and see what I can capture.