For this week's baking, we decided to learn how to make cake. The original plan was to have a decoration contest and have family members vote on who had the better design, however, Logan was not able to bake this week due to unforeseen circumstances. Due to not being able to meet, only Brayden made a cake. To start, I gathered all my ingredients. Once I had my ingredients, I began by whipping together eggs and sugar for 7 minutes. In a separate bowl, I combined flour, baking powder, and salt. From there, I gradually added the flour mixture to the egg mixture, a little at a time while whisking it together. Once the mixtures were well incorporated, I set them aside and prepared the milk mixture. Using a stove to heat the milk, I then added butter to the milk and let it sit until melted. From there, I mixed part of the batter in the milk mixture until it had a foamy consistency. Next, I added the milk and batter mixture with the rest of the batter, mixing slowly. Now came the cooking process. I preheated the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the oven was ready, I put the cake in for 25 minutes. Once it was done baking, I took it out of the oven and let it cool for 45 minutes. Now that it had cooled, it was time to decorate it. I started by preparing all the different color icings I needed: black, brown, blue, yellow, and white. I then decorated the cake as desired. Overall, this week was something different, but it did not pose too much of a challenge, however, there were some difficulties. Trying to get the egg mixture to the right consistency was difficult and decorating the cake was fun but difficult as well. Next week will be part two of making cake with Logan baking his.
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This week we made bagels. As stated in the post last week, this is not completely new to the group, so it was not too much of a challenge. However, we decided to challenge ourselves by making new flavors we had not made before. The flavors we made were blueberry, everything, and Asiago cheese. To begin with the bagel-making process we gathered all our needed ingredients. This included water, yeast, sugar, bread flour, salt, everything seasoning, Asiago cheese, and blueberries. To begin, we mixed warm water with sugar and yeast. We then let that sit while covered for 10 minutes to let the yeast wake up. Next, we prepared our bread flour and salt in a bowl while waiting for the yeast to wake up. Once the 10 minutes was up, we added our water mixture to the flour mixture. From there, we mixed and kneaded until we had a smooth dough. For the blueberry recipe, we added in the blueberries during this process. Once our doughs were smooth, we put them in a greased bowl and let them rise for one hour. After an hour had passed, we put our dough onto a floured work surface. From there, we cut the dough into 4 equal pieces, 8 in total from both doughs. We rolled each piece of dough into a ball and let them rest for another 10 minutes. After the dough balls had rested for 10 minutes, it was time to begin the cooking process. We added water to a pot and brought it to a boil. Once boiling, we took each dough ball, pinched a hole in the middle, and dropped it into the water for one minute per side. When this process was complete for all 8 dough balls we added our toppings. We sprinkled everything seasoning on 2 bagels and Asiago cheese on another 2 bagels. Once the bagels were topped, we put them into the oven at 425 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes. After they were done, we let them rest for a few minutes then served them to eat. This process has many steps though it is not too difficult. Next week, we will be making cake and may have a competition to go with it. This week we made double deluxe brownies. This was a smooth and easy process with no major difficulties or obstacles. The only difficulties we faced were mixing the batter and the cooking time. The batter was very thick, making it hard to mix without a mixer. The cooking time from the recipe left the brownies a touch undercooked, so we had to cook the brownies for longer than intended. To make the batter we started with the dry ingredients. We combined granulated sugar, all-purpose flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt into a bowl and then set it aside. Next, we combined the wet ingredients. We melted unsalted butter and mixed it with eggs and vanilla extract until it was smooth. From there, we combined the wet mix with the dry mix and mixed until fully incorporated. This took a few minutes due to the density of the batter. When everything was fully incorporated, we stirred in chocolate chips. From there we put the batter into a pan greased with cooking spray. After the oven preheated to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, we put the brownies in for 40 minutes. Due to the brownies still being undercooked, we decided to put them in for an extra 5 or so minutes. When they were cooked, we cut them into squares and served them to eat. This week's baking was not too hard overall. Next week the plan is to make homemade bagels. This is not something completely new to the group so it should not pose a challenge. However, the challenge could come from making new flavors. Next week time management is going to be important, as it was hard to find time this week to make the brownies. As of right now, we still plan to hold a bake sale, however, with each week passing we may need to resort to one of the other options discussed last week. This week was all about planning out our fundraising strategy. We are in the works of finding a specific organization to target, but we plan on raising money to help fight hunger and homelessness. In terms of how we are going to go about raising the money, we are still in the process of figuring it out. We had originally planned on setting up a bake sale with the help of a local business. However, we found that it would be easier to set up in a farmer's market. To maximize profits, we would need to attend an event, which would be hard to time so it can land on the last few weeks of the project. As we discussed some more, we began to draft up some possible alternatives. Instead of donating money, we could donate food directly to pantries. We would need to bake something that doesn't go bad quickly enough before it can be dispensed, such as bread. We will continue to explore more possibilities in the future.
Another thing we needed to address this week was time management. This week, we did a poor job of managing our time and setting a planned schedule, so we were not able to do any baking. As a result, we were stuck planning. As we continue forward with this project, we need to figure out how to balance our busy days from school with making time to bake and continue everything needed for the project. Not only will figuring out time management help us in this project, but it will also help us throughout the rest of our lives, so it is important we learn it now before we create too bad of a habit of procrastination and putting things off. Next week, we plan to make brownies and practice time management to make things easier on ourselves. |
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