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.
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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.
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May 2022
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