OverviewWe are so close. Second to last week. We are in the homestretch and it is crazy to think about. Personally I think this semester has flown by. To start to close up this project I have decided to make a cookie skillet. I wanted to make apple pie but that seemed extremely complicated and I do not even like apple pie. The cookie skillet was also complicated but I tasted better than apple pie at least. This recipe was different to me because it was all mixed on the stove in the cast iron. I had to mix everything with a wooden spoon and it was extremely time consuming but I think I did it right. The ProcessSo what did I actually do? If I am being completely honest I have no idea. I was so confused and really just hoped the whole time that I didn’t burn it or myself. The recipe started with melting a lot of butter in the cast iron. Once that was finished I had to add the sugar. This was hard because it was hard for me to tell when it was completely mixed in. I eventually just assumed it was mixed and then I had to mix in the egg. The recipe was very serious when it said to remove the skillet from heat because the eggs could cook. That kind of freaked me out so I immediately just started mixing and didn’t stop until the eggs were completely mixed in. After this was the hardest part. I had to mix the dry ingredients into this mixture in the skillet. It was probably a 3:1 ratio of flour to wet ingredients. My goal was to not spill flour everywhere and to attempt to get it all mixed in well. It took me about 30 minutes but after all of that and a sore wrist it was mixed in. I finally put it in the oven for 25 minutes. It started to burn so I took it out even though I knew it wasn’t fully cooked. I always eat raw cookie dough so I figured it would be fine. Final Result
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Gluten Free?!So, what happened this week? Well, I tried something new once again. Mr.Barker and I were talking the other day and we got on the topic of gluten allergies. I was telling him about how I had never made anything gluten free because I figured it would be very complicated. I thought you had to change the idea of the whole recipe and I figured everything would be different. He informed me that it was not like that at all. He told me about how there are easy substitutes for what you can’t use and that everything is pretty much the same. So, after this conversation I decided to try something gluten free and that day I happened to be craving brownies so that is what I made. It's not that differentI expected this recipe to take me a while but it actually only took about an hour which is less than most of my recipes have taken. I started by going to the gluten free section in food lion to find gluten free 1:1 flour. This means that it's a pretty good substitute for normal flour and that is what my recipe called for. They also had other options like almond flour which I would love to try in the future. Besides the flour, the rest of the ingredients were the same as normal. Personally I have never made any brownies besides the boxed ones. This worried me because new experiences can stress me out because I don't really know what I am doing. But it was pretty easy to figure out. All I had to do was melt the chocolate and butter together and then pour my flour and other ingredients into that. They baked for 35 minutes and then they came out of the oven very gooey and delicious. Lessons LearnedTo my surprise, the brownies tasted like normal brownies. In saying this, I learned a life lesson this week. I tend to judge things that I have never tried before I am ever exposed to it at all. This judgment causes me to miss out on opportunities in life and I hope that I remember this lesson when I am faced with an unfamiliar situation.
Why Red Velvet?Wow! We are 10 weeks into Genius Hour. That is insane to me. It was blown by and I can’t believe we are this close to finishing. At the beginning of this project I was worried about the workload and if I would have time and I thought it would stress me out. To my surprise, I have enjoyed this project and I am so happy I got the opportunity to learn how to enjoy baking. With that being said, this week I made red velvet cake. It was extremely stressful. This was the first time I have made a cake and it is a lot harder than everything I have done so far. I needed to challenge myself this week and I for sure did. In the end, it kind of worked but it was a process getting there. The StruggleThis week I chose a recipe that looked pretty good and the ingredients were easy to find. Before I started cooking, all I looked at was the ingredients. I quickly learned that I need to read the whole recipe before I start. If I would have done this I would have noticed that the recipe was not good. It was not specific enough and was not worded well at all. For example, half way into the cake I had to make a buttermilk mixture. The next step is to mix dry ingredients into the butter mixture. First of all, WHAT DRY INGREDIENTS. Second of all, I have 2 butter mixtures, which one? So I added what I thought was the dry ingredients into the buttermilk but turns out I picked the wrong butter mixture. At this point I was at my breaking point. I had a minor breakdown but then when I got myself together I decided the best plan of action was to dump everything in the bowl and start mixing. It looked pretty mixed so I put it in the oven and made the icing. After this everything went pretty smoothly. The cake tasted nothing like red velvet cake but it tasted really good. What I Learned?This week was a very big learning experience and was one of the first weeks that actually stressed me out. The reason I was so stressed is because I was too worried about what the cake would taste like and not the process of making it. I think this is a lesson learned for me. I learned that no one really cares what it tastes like besides me. They will eat whatever I put in front of them and if it's not good they won’t. Not everything I make is going to be amazing and that’s okay. You live and you learn and it’s going to be okay. The ProcessThis week I made a banana creme pie in Hawaii. This was for my aunts baby shower and my other aunt wanted me to help her make the pie. She gave me the recipe and came to our house to help me. This week was a lot easier because my aunt bought all of the ingredients for me and brought it to me with all of the utensils I would need. Even with this though this week was kind of a failure. I'll explain that in a minute but it was very interesting. One thing I realized this week is that baking with someone else in the kitchen with you is a lot more fun then doing it alone. So, How did we do it?We had to make three things for this recipe. The crust, filling, and the whip cream. We started with the filling because it had to sit on the stove for a long time so we figured we would go ahead and get it out of the way. One thing to know about me is that I hate ovens. I am a very big fear of being burnt. So trying to get this filling to boil was a process. My aunt helped me a lot but I feel like working with the stove helped me conquer a lot of my fears. The crust was really simple and I did it all alone and finished it in a few minutes. After that things took a turn for the worse. We began making the whip cream. When you make whip cream you are supposed to watch is really closely because it is really easy to over whip. When you over whip it, it becomes chunky and it is really hard to fix. That is exactly what happened. We attempted to fix it with powdered sugar and milk but that just made it worse. Eventually we gave up and went and bought cool whip. After that we had to let it sit in the fridge for 24 hours before we could eat it. Besides the almost sour cream whip cream, the banana creme pie tasted delicious and I was satisfied with the product. Picture 1: Attempting to boil milk Picture 2: Curdled whip cream Picture 3: Final Product Final ThoughtThis week was very much a learning experience. Once again, I have to pay more attention to what I am doing and constantly watch what is happening to whatever I am making. Also I realized that my fear of ovens wasn't actually that bad and once I just did it, it didn't seem that hard. Overall this pie tasted amazing and my family thought it was a success also. I am really excited to see how I use these lessons I learned this week, next week.
New ThingsThis week I have experienced many new things. For one I am in Hawaii and there are so many new foods I have become aware of. You may be wondering what in the world are Ube Cookies. Well I had no idea either until my little cousin told me. Ube is a purple sweet potato and they use it a lot in sweets here. I wanted to try to make something that related to Hawaiian culture and challenged me a little bit. My cousin said she really enjoyed these cookies so I figured it was a good idea to make them. Being here I have tried so many new foods and learned so many new things about baking. For example here a lot of their results are more fruity then sweet. I have had banana bread and sugared fruit and a lot of other healthier options then I see at home. One of those sweets being Ube desserts. BakingThis week there were many challenges with this project. First of all, two of the main ingredients were Ube extract and Ube jam. These are both extremely hard to find. I had to go to two different stores until I finally found them. Once I found them I got the rest of the ingredients and went back to our house. This is were I hit my second issue. We only had three measuring cups, one cup, one fourth, and one third. I am used to having every measuring cup possible but with this being all I had, I had no choice but to make it work. My solution was washing as I went and guessing the measurements with the ones I couldn’t make exactly. My third problem was that at home I have a standing mixer, here I do not. This wasn’t that hard to fix I just mixed things by hand and it gave me a little arm work out. As I made the cookie batter I noticed how similar it was to my monster cookies. One of the only differences was the Ube. This made things a lot easier for me to figure out and in the end they turned out pretty good. I actually went and bought Ube cookies at the store to compare and most of my family said that they liked mine better then the stores. This made me feel pretty happy with how they turned out. The cookies may have been messy and a little problematic but they turned out pretty good. They got a little more messy then I thought they would, I turned into a purple Smurf by the end My thoughts…I think this week has taught me a lot of important lessons. One of them being to make things work with what you have and do not take advantage of what you do have. At home I am lucky to have a standing mixer, measuring cups, a baking pan, and plenty of space. Here I had none of that. Luckily I got a pan from my aunt and everything else I just made it work. I think learning this lesson will make me a better baker and prepare me for when I start doing harder recipes. I am excited for next week and what I will continue to bake on this journey.
Why a break?Throughout these past weeks of the Genius Hour project, I have been trying really hard to do something new each week but this week I just simply didn't have time. Which is okay. This week has been extremely busy and stressful and I decided to make it a reflection week on this project. Sometime it is okay to accept defeat and not over push yourself. If I would have baked something this week I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it and to me that is what matters. My goal for this project is to learn how to enjoy baking more and expand my knowledge. I think taking a break week with really help me in the future. What I have learned so far?I would say the biggest thing I have gotten out of this project is patience. When you are baking one of the most important thing to know is patience. Also while you are being patient, you have to be paying attention. You can't just leave and let things go, you have to constantly be watching just in case something goes wrong and you have to stop and fix it. Another thing I have learned it trust. In a lot of the recipes I have done, they are trust the process type of recipes. That means that throughout I get really worried because the batter doesn't look like what I am used to and I just to keep going and it works out. When I try to change the recipe to make it like I am used to, that is when things mess up. This is just the beginning of what I have and will learned and I am excited to learn more. What's next?Next week I will be on vacation to go visit my family in Hawaii. My aunt that lives there is a fabulous baker and I hope to watch her when she bakes some for her baby shower and I might try to make some Hawaiian recipes that she gives me. Besides that my next big goal is a layer red velvet cake. This will require me to make icing to connect the layers and then a flavored icing for the cake. I hope to decorate it also if I am able to. This will be the biggest thing I have ever tried to make and I am really hoping it goes well.
Getting ReadySo this week I was feeling special so I decided to make two recipes. Well it wasn't planned but I will explain in a second. Earlier in this project my dad said his only request was chocolate eclair cake. He said he hadn't had it in so long and it reminded him a lot of childhood so this week was mainly for him. I got all of my ingredients at Dollar General this week which was nice because it was cheap. All I needed was vanilla pudding, cool whip, and gram crackers. So once I made the cake I told one of my friends and he really wanted me to make my cookies. These cookies are called monster cookies and they are what got me into baking. I always have the ingredients on hand so I didn't have to worry about that aspect. I have made them so many times that I have the recipe memorized so those were really calming and easy for me. So this week was pretty simple and this is how it went. Lets Get BakingOverall both of these recipes were pretty easy. The cake required no actual baking in the oven. I started with thawing out the cool whip. Again this week, it tested my patience. Who knew it took so long for cool whip to thaw? I waited a good 30 minutes and then just gave up. So I mixed the pudding and let it sit for 5 minutes then mixed in the cool whip with it. After this I laid down the gram crackers on the bottom of the dish and then put the mixture of pudding and cool whip on top and continues to make layers until the dish was full. At the end I melted chocolate icing which was unusual for me. I had to be very careful because if I were to spill it I would have burned myself. But I did not. I poured it on top of the cake and let it sit in the fridge for twelve hours. After that I was done. Besides the twelve hour waiting, the whole process probably took 20 minutes which was really nice. The next day I decided to make cookies because my friend really talked me into it. I really didn't feel like it if I am being honest but I decided it wasn't that hard and I hadn't made them in forever. These cookies were absolutely delicious and they were gone within 10 minutes of me finishing them. Mr. Barkers Rating: 8/10 Landon Novak's Rating: 8/10 (Considering they tasted it on Wednesday and it was made on Friday) ConclusionI thoroughly enjoyed this week even though it didn't challenge me that much. Both of my recipes turned out well and tasted amazing. Since people have started to figure out I am doing this project and I am getting many requests. I have gotten requests for apple cinnamon pie, red velvet cake, and a few more things. Next week I don't know what I am going to make. However, I will find a recipe and hopefully succeed. One thing I realized this week is that when I bring my deserts to school I need to bring more utensils. I hope that next week goes as well as this week did and I continue to learn the art of baking.
Before the KitchenThis week I had no idea what I wanted to make. I was tired of making sweets if I am being honest. Don't get me wrong, I have a huge sweet tooth. But I wanted to try something new. I was talking to one of my friends about my situation and she requested soft pretzels. She gave me a recipe that she had tried multiple times and said it tasted really good. I was really excited for this because it reminded of 2020, which is really weird I know. During 2020 I made so much bread and it is also when I started to love baking. So once she gave me this recipe I was 100% going to use this one. The BakingBaking the pretzels started with finding the ingredients. It didn't need very many ingredients but yeast is hard to find. I found a lot in my cabinet but it was all expired. Finally I called my grandma and she gave me some. After that I made the dough, I had to let it sit for one hour. Once it had risen, I had to to make pretzels shapes. This was the part that my friend had warned me about. She said it was pretty hard. Luckily I figured it out after about the fourth try. The recipe made a total of eight pretzels and after I made them I had to boil them then put them in the oven. When they came out of the oven I got really worried because they were stuck to the pan. The recipe did not tell me to grease the pan but I did anyways and they still got stuck. After I finally got them off, they tasted really good especially warm. My brother ate four out of the eight so they were at least a success in his eyes. Just ignore the half eaten one because I forgot to take a picture before my dad took one of them. Next Week?I have already had many requests this week for what I should make next week. I have been asked to make chocolate eclair cake, monster cookies and many other things. So as of right now I have no idea what I am going to do. I kind of want to find a recipe that is a little more complicated then what I have done so far to see if I could handle it. But overall this week was a success and I am looking forward to next week.
PreparingThis week I figured that since my cookies didn't go as planned last week, I would try pound cake. I have made a lemon pound cake one time and it was fairly easy. I found a recipe for a vanilla pound cake online and I already had all of the ingredients from what I did last week and just everyday stuff I use. I read the recipe before hand this time to make sure I knew what was coming next after each step to prepare myself and prevent as many mistakes as I can. After I read it I began baking. Time to Mix For this recipe there was only 5 ingredients for the cake batter. Sugar, butter, vanilla extract, eggs, and flour. So overall is seemed pretty simple. When I started mixing batter the hardest part was patience. Most of the past desserts I have made were pretty quick and I didn't have to focus for very long but this one was the complete opposite. The first step required me to mix sugar, butter, and vanilla extract for eight minutes. Luckily I have an standing mixer but those were the longest eight minutes of my life. Once that was over with I had to mix each of the 4 eggs individually into the batter and then the whole cake had to cook for an hour. So needless to say this recipe tested my patience but the old saying is true. Patience is key because this week my cake turned out really good. I even made a glaze to put on it at the end and it turned out delicious. Since last week I think I have learned a lot even though it has only been one week. My family tried my cake and they said it tasted really good so I am satisfied with this recipe this week. It tasted good and looked good!
PlanningDuring the second week of Genius hour I started to dive into the actually baking aspect of this. Since I already knew how to make some cookies I decided to start with something I knew and make cookies this week. Since I knew this I began researching what type I wanted to make. I did not want to make any average cookie like chocolate chip. I looked up special cookie recipes and found a s'mores cookie recipe. It seemed pretty simple and I already had most of the ingredients. In the KitchenThe first thing I did was lay out all of my ingredients in order to keep myself organized. Everything was going very well and the mixing process took about 45 minutes. Most of it was pretty similar to what I already knew about making cookies but there was a few ingredients that made it different. For example, I mixed gram crackers in with the flour but still mixed the wet and dry ingredients separately then combined like I did in all other cookies I have ever made. When I finished the mixing I baked them. This is where everything went very far downhill. I baked them for seven minutes like the recipe said but when I took them out they did not look right. I accidentally made a very thin cookie cake. All of the cookies grew together and did not firm up at all. They were also extremely thin and you could not eat them with your hands, you had to use a fork. When I tasted them they tasted amazing but they just weren't cookies. Overall this is a tasteful fail. A total of two cookies are shown here |
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May 2022
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