Well, there are some who do find that for the most part, Bolivian food seems like a twin of some sort to the rest of the food of the altiplano – the Peruvian side around Puno and such, and it does seem that they may be the case in modern day. Keeping in mind that while Bolivia has a huge wealth of natural resources, it has, economically, gone from being one of the wealthiest parts of the Incan and later Spanish empires, to the poorest country in South America (based on GDP), with some 2/3 of the population living in poverty. No doubt that has had an impact over time on the food that is currently available and offered up as the national cuisine versus what it likely was at one time. Overall, this exercise in taking the modern day offerings and turning them into something more interesting for our table was quite interesting – rivalling, in some ways, our recent World Food Day fare.

In terms of the cake, the recipe is linked in the posting….