The Immigrant Bake Off

A guide to building community abroad, one dessert and dirty joke at a time

“Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma.” — Anthony Bourdain

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When you move abroad, everyone talks about the food and the culture and the healthcare. Nobody talks about how hard it is to find your people. Back home, friendships accumulate over decades: the college roommate, the work friend, the neighbor whose dog loves your dog. You don’t think about how those relationships were built because they were organic. Easy. Then you move to another country, and you realize you have to start from scratch. At 50-something. It’s hella hard.

My husband and I have been in Portugal for two years now. We’ve made friends, but the process is slower than anyone prepares you for, and lonelier than I usually admit. Of my five closest friends from my American life, exactly one has come to visit. The others exist in my phone, in birthday texts and occasional voice memos, but they haven’t stood in my kitchen or sat at my table. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

So when you find a group that makes you laugh, that shows up, that says yes to things, you hold onto them. You invent reasons to gather. You formalize the fun.

Which is exactly how we ended up with The Bake Off.

Here’s how it started. A couple we know (a Frenchman and his British wife) had been quietly organizing a friendly baking competition among a small group: themselves, a Scottish couple, and a single Romanian guy with whom the Frenchman often surfs. We were all watching rugby at our local sports bar when it was casually mentioned. We invited ourselves immediately, and the group approved.

The premise was simple and borrowed shamelessly from a certain beloved BBC program: each person or couple would host a gathering at their home, bake a dessert from scratch, and submit to judging. Scores would be recorded in secret on video, elimination-style, and the winner wouldn’t be revealed until the very end. The British wife appointed herself official scorekeeper.

Over the next few weeks our tables would become a United Nations of sorts: a Frenchman, two Brits, two Scots, a Romanian, an Italian, a Trinidadian (my husband, who would like me to point out that the correct term is Trini), and me — one solitary American, doing her best to explain the unexplainable when the inevitable: “What the hell is going on with America?!” questions arise.

The Bake Off Begins

Round One: The French Apple Tart

The Frenchman hosted first, which felt right, a bit like letting the person who suggested the restaurant order first. He made an apple tart. From scratch, crust included. No fanfare, no elaborate spread, just charcuterie on the side and the tart as the main event. It was delicious and quietly confident, the way French people tend to be about food. Bien sûr it was good. I’d expect nothing less from a country that has perfected pastries.

After tasting, we went to a back room one by one to deliver our verdicts to the British wife, who filmed each of us giving our scores privately, ceremonially, and a little like a confessional. She guards the results with an energy that suggests she was born for this role.

Scores: Saved. Competition: Officially begun.

Not too sweet, and the crust was crispy/a little burnt, which is how I like it: 8/10

Pomme Tart

Round Two: The Scottish Victoria Sponge

The Scots did not come to play.

Where Round One was elegant restraint, Round Two arrived with a bevy of additional Scottish traditions: finger sandwiches (cucumber, ham, egg salad), a tomato soup, blood sausage, smoked salmon on crackers, oysters, puffed sausage pastries, and enough champagne to float a small vessel. The Scottish wife baked a Victoria Sponge, which is two vanilla cakes with homemade strawberry jam and mascarpone icing sandwiched between them.

A mutual friend of all of us — a Brit whose Italian wife was out of town — was invited for this one, which is when things started getting delightfully complicated. Were he and his wife now part of the competition? Could they vote? Were their votes retroactive? No one fully ironed this out, and no one seems to care. We’re making the rules as we go, which is also how most of us ended up in Portugal in the first place.

I had to leave early that afternoon, shortly after the cake was served. I was fighting a cold and running on fumes. But I’m told the rest of them stayed until the music stopped and then kept going anyway. Scots, amiright?

The jam and mascarpone tasted like Spring: 8.5/10

Scottish Victoria Sponge Cake

Round Three: He Has Risen

We hosted on Easter Sunday.

Before I tell you what my husband baked, I want to establish something about us as people: we do not take ourselves seriously. We are always, always up for a dirty joke. If you are easily offended, or if you feel strongly that Easter Sunday is not the appropriate occasion for adult humor, I want you to know that I respect that, and I invite you to skip the next few paragraphs.

Still here? Good. You’re my kind of person.

My husband was doing the baking, and he had borrowed a silicone baking mold from a Swiss friend. The kind shaped like a penis. My husband — a man who never met a joke he didn’t want to take one step further — made an almond cake with pineapple, coconut, and blueberries. A pineapple upside-down cake, essentially. He planned to call it a Penis Colada cake. Then our hosting date landed on Easter, and he made an executive decision.

When it was time to serve the cake, he carried it out of the kitchen — plated on my grandmother’s wedding china, no less — set it on the table in front of our guests and announced:

“He Has Risen.”

The table lost it. Completely and entirely. Eight people from eight corners of the world united in laughter that cut through the weight we’ve all been carrying this past year, and reminded us the world still has good things in it. Bourdain would have pulled up a chair immediately.

The cake was moist, and I adore the Caribbean flavor combination of pineapple and coconut. My favorite so far: 10/10

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When the laughter settled, I did what I always do in moments like that. I looked around and took a mental picture to share with my 12-year-old self.

We had just moved into this house two weeks before, and this was the first real gathering we’d hosted here. We made it an early brunch because we had an Easter lunch to get to later that afternoon. We served scrambled eggs, bacon, fresh croissants from the bakery at the end of our street, and mimosas made with the sweetest Portuguese orange juice you’ve ever tasted. The day couldn’t have been more perfect. Sky? Cerulean blue. The terracotta patio tiles warm under our bare feet. MATTFOU Radio on the Sonos, the patio umbrella doing its job, and new friends from foreign countries sitting in our garden talking about life.

It sounds dreamy, and it was. But I try to be honest here, so I have to say this: This house has been a long time coming, and I’ve written about all of that [start here if you’re interested in “Before & After” photos]. Beyond the house, though, this was a moment. I was realizing my childhood dream of sitting next to the love of my life in a beautiful home in a quaint European village, feeling complete, happy, and safe.

When I imagined sharing a moment like this for the first time, I pictured it with my closest friends — the ones who know this has been a lifelong dream of mine, and who also know the price we paid in trauma to get here. But I chose to move away. So it won’t be them. New chapters, and all that.

Bourdain was right. Food is everything we are. It’s your history, your culture, your grandma. And when you’re building a new life far from home, food is also the fastest way to find your people. You don’t need a shared language or a shared history. Just a table full of Europeans, an American, and a Trini with a silicone mold and absolutely no shame — all willing to eat a cake shaped like a resurrection.