Creativity - 1/27/21 (Learning outcome 3)

 Yesterday I spent the evening baking with my mom. Our neighborhoods senior center asked for volunteers to make treats to hand out, and since I love to bake it was the perfect volunteer opportunity. The extra good part about this was not only was I able to make some treats for seniors that I know they are really going to enjoy, but I also got to practice for the next box that I will be making for my business. Each month with the upcoming boxes I have to experiment with different recipes to find the perfect one to fit our theme. So since I was making boxes for seniors, who I know are supportive basically no matter what, I decided to test out a few new recipes. The first one I tried was merengues. I had never made merengues before and they scared me a little bit because they are so fragile, and they take a lot of patience. Beating the egg whites seems like it takes forever and it is hard to know when you have them to the right consistency. Despite this, I was patient and waited for them to get stiff enough so they would not crack in the oven. However, even with all my patience some of them did crack! Luckily though, the bulk of them were in good condition and I was extremely pleased with the way they turned out. Although I know I could still use some practice, I am motivated to make them again because of how they turned out and I know they will only get better with practice. Another thing I made for the seniors was truffles. I made these truffles a couple weeks ago, but there was something missing, so I added a layer of dark chocolate on top to give it a more crunchy bite. It was a huge success trying this a second time and I was very happy with the results. Even though at first I wasn't positive I wanted to make them again they turned out beautifully and I'm very glad I perservered! 

This was a part of learning outcome 1, because there were several elements that went into this. First I had to decide what we would make for the season, then I had to make sure that I would have sufficient time to make them all. By planning all these out I was able to make some delicious treats for the seniors, but also test some treats for the upcoming box for my business. This helped me be more prepared and make sure that I had everything I needed for things to go smoothly. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Service 11/19/21 (Learning Outcome

 Over the weekend I went to the DASH buddy walk which is a walk for families with down syndrome. It was a little chilly when we arrived at the minor league baseball stadium we started by cheering on people as they entered. All the kids especially were very excited and loved all the encouragment they were getting. After a little cheering, we moved on to a face painting booth and started painting people's faces. We weren't super experienced, but luckily there were stencils so things actually turned out pretty okay. At first it started slow, but all of a sudden there were lots of people who wanted to get their faces painted. And it wasn't just the kids, there parents were also very into it and it was a lot of fun to see how much they wanted to match their kids and how much they appreciated the simple work we were doing. The face painting booth was basically busy all the time and our skills improved throughout the day as we added glitter and mutiple colors. In the end it was a ...
Read more

Creativity 12/1/21 (Learning Outcome 1)

Yesterday I tested another recipe for my baking business to prepare for our holiday treat box and also some special orders we have received. I wanted to stick with the holiday theme so I decided to try chocolate cupcakes with peppermint frosting. I wasn't sure if the cucpakes should be chocolate or also have peppermint so I decided to do half and half to see which I liked better. Unfortunately, when adding the extract I added way too much for the small amount of batter I had which was a little too much. After making my batter and making the cupcakes I realized I had made a few mistakes because I had halved the recipe leaving me with weird proportions that were hard to measure. This lead to the cupcakes having a slightly strange texture and sticking to the pan. Despite this, they tasted absolutely delicious especially when paired with the tasty peppermint frosting. Even though they didn't look great, they tasted super delicious and I know they will make a great addition to our h...
Read more

Creativity 8/21/21 (Learning Outcome 1)

 Over the past week I have been testing out lots of new recipes for my upcoming treat box. I have wanted the theme the box after supermarket treats that are better homemade, so I've been scouring the aisles looking for household favorites. My first thought was the lofthouse cookie: the classic combination of pale cakey cookie with sweet frosting. When I made these they turned out great and tasted delicious because of real ingredients being used instead of what might be found in the store-bought version. My next idea was giant bakery style blueberry muffins. I always think of these with the sugar on top of a sweet streusel bursting with blueberries. I made these with fresh picked blueberries and they were amazing. Much more moist and fresh than the storebought counterpart. So far things were going well! Next I attempted hostess cupcakes: a chocolate cupcake with a chocolate glaze stuffed with marshmellowy filling. I thought these were going to be great...until I forgot the sugar. Th...
Read more