At the beginning of today, I really wasn't sure what my presentation was going to look like or how I would present what I had learned and done throughout the intensive. So, that became my goal for today: to figure out a solid plan for presenting and work on something physical to show at the intensive fair tomorrow.
I started the day by finishing up my cookbook, adding in last minute recipes, fixing pages that needed to be fixed, and–most importantly–adding a title. Since this wasn't a recipe book I was able to print several copies of, I am going to show it during the fair, allowing people to look through it and, if they want, take pictures of recipes that spark their interest. I wish I could have made more copies that weren't expensive or really time-consuming that I could have given people. Although I can't give others the cookbook, it is nice to have a collection of all of my favorite things I've made over the years in one place with a nice format. After I finished the cookbook, I started working on my a bigger presentation that shows an overall representation of what I did and what I learned for the past three weeks. This took longer because I not only wanted to make it look nice and presentable but I also had to choose the most important things I learned because I had limited space on the poster board. I wanted to put things on there that were not only applicable to my time during the intensive but also something people could take away to their own lives like "preparation is key" and "patience is necessary to success" and so on. Of course, no intensive fair project about cooking would be incomplete without food to share. So, when I got home from school, I made lemon bread to share with everyone who comes and sees my presentation. I chose this recipe because it's one featured in my cookbook and one that doesn't take a lot of time and isn't too difficult. I'm excited to present tomorrow and share to the MV community (for the last time, sadly) what I learned these last three weeks.
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One of my favorite things is to make something and have someone enjoy it so much that it just immediately puts a smile on his or her face. But something I love even more is watching someone try something new and be proud of the end result. Today, in my cooking class, I got to see that with each of the people I taught. I spent most of the day prepping for it and it went pretty smoothly. I started by gathering all of my ingredients and making sure I had everything and re-reading the recipe several times. The worst feeling is when I'm in the middle of a recipe and I realize I'm one egg short or just ran out of powdered sugar or something. Like my other blog said, definitely one of the most important parts of anything, especially in the kitchen, is prepping. That will always set you up for success, and I wanted to make sure this class went well. As I've mentioned before, I've taken a cake decorating class and wanted to use a lot of the concepts I learned in that in this class. One aspect of the class that I was a little disappoint about what that there was no variety in cake. Cakes can be so much more than white cake with vanilla frosting. I know that the class was simply a decorating class and not a cake-flavoring one, but I wanted to make sure I had at least two options for my students. I made both chocolate and vanilla cakes with vanilla. chocolate, and lemon buttercream frosting. I was going to have three students, so I made six 6" cakes, so that each of them could have a small two-layer cake to take home. Looking back, I should have made another cake for demoing, but it ended up working out just great because the students really took charge and tapped into their creativity which is exactly what I wanted them to do. One small issue I ran into while prepping was my frosting. I tried to make a recipe that I had gotten the recipe for in the class because it makes a higher volume and is better for decorating, but it didn't set right. This was my second attempt at trying this recipe, and it wasn't working, so I decided to make a different kind that I normally make. That setback probably wasted at least an hour of my time, but at least I tried it. One other realization that occurred to me while I was setting everything up was that all cooking classes that I've been to have had enough of the utensils used in the class to give to most, if not all, of the students. Although I only had three students and it wasn't much of a problem, I didn't have enough of the small tools I, personally, would have used if I were decorating one of these cakes which did make it a little harder for some. After putting the baked cakes in the freezer to set, laying out all of the utensils I had for them to use, setting up work stations for each of them, and making recipes of the cake and the frostings, I was ready to teach. Later in the evening, my three students arrived, and I gave them a brief intro of what we'd be doing, what each recipe was and that I'd hope they could repeat these things at home. After the intro, did a very short demonstration on one of the cakes, showing them how I make my cakes look professional and what tools I use to do so. They were super enthusiastic to learn and it was a really fun experience. One of my students asked me how long it takes me to make a cakes from the start to the end and I told them the truth: for a normal sized 8 or 9 inch cake, it takes me about 5 hours. They were shocked at this, but I explained to them that to make it looK and taste good, you have to be really patient. It takes time to bake it perfectly and chilling it and frosting it and chilling it again and finishing it off. Throughout the night, the students were having fun and trying new things while asking me for a few pieces of advice along the way. When they finally finished their final products, they were beaming and so proud to have made the cakes they did. Below are the cakes they made: I'm so proud of what my students did, and even if they didn't look professional, the great thing about baking is that it doesn't matter what it looks like because it'll probably taste great.
As I had time over the long weekend to think about a plan going forward with this intensive, I began to formulate realistic goals for the rest of the time. Since I only have a few more days of working (since I am going to be at orientation for two of the days), I'm not sure when I'll be at Zingerman's next since I have a lot of work to get done here. For today, my goal was to finalize a date for a cooking class for me to teach and to gather at least a few people to take it. Another goal of mine was to work on my cookbook, unsure of how far I would get.
To start off the day, I began finalizing plans for a cooking class. I've decided to teach a cake-decorating class tomorrow night at my house since most people have busy schedules during the day and right after school, and it's easier to work in my own kitchen. I've taken a cake-decorating class before, and I'm going to use a lot of the techniques and methods taught in that class to teach mine. In general, I'm just going to use tips I've learned from all of the classes I've taken or helped with in the past. I will talk more about those techniques in tomorrow's blog as I teach them to the class. I plan on starting the class with an introduction and outlining the goals of the class and helpful tips before beginning any recipe (such as reading the recipe all the way through at least twice). For tomorrow, we won't be doing any actual "baking", but I will be sending them home with recipes of how to make a simple (yet delicious) cake for layering and decorating as well as recipes for buttercream. I will also be sending everyone home with a 6" one-layer cake that they decorated themselves. During the actual class itself, I want to show them the techniques behind cake-decorating and all of the different ways to do it. That alone will be a 2-3 hour class. To prep for that, today I wrote up the recipes for the cake and buttercream that will be used in the class as well as some helpful tips. I made about a three page document with all of the recipes and information on it for tomorrow. As I've seen (or not seen) in past cooking classes, it's really helpful for the student to have as much information as possible written down so that, if faced with a problem or a question in the middle of a recipe, they can look to their notes and know what to do. I've found that in the middle of cooking, I choose to do something because the directions are unclear and then the final product doesn't turn out very good because I either didn't read the recipe completely or forgot an important step that was only spoken aloud. Cooking and baking can be finicky processes and information is everyone's friend. To further prep for the classes, I gathered all of the ingredients and equipment needed to make and decorate the cakes. Tomorrow, I am going to bake the cakes and get everything ready for decorate so that they can come in without having to do any prep work. This is how most cooking classes function, but I do want to make sure I cover and talk about how to prep it and bake it because that is something the students will have to know if they want to recreate it at home. Furthermore, today I also worked on my physical cookbook. I finished writing most of the recipes and did most of the pages. Since this is a physical and not electronic cookbook, it's taking me a little longer to complete the pages, but I made a lot of progress on it today. All I need to do is finish writing a few more recipes and maybe add in a few more as well as add pictures. I completed all of my goals for today and am excited that things are finally coming together and I can see the product in sight. Tomorrow, I plan to finish getting ready for the cake-decorating class by prepping all of the ingredients as well as the work area and making more progress on the cookbook. Communication. It is one of the most valuable things to know as a human being. We need communication in everything. Teaching, learning, playing a sport, working, building good relationships. It is a major key to success, especially when running a business like Zingerman's. Today, I started off the day there by joining one their group meetings (which they call "huddles"). These huddles are a time for every person there to bring up what they think is and isn't working and how to make their business more efficient and better for everyone, customers and employees. Not only was this an auditory meeting, but they had schedules of the next few months planned out for their classes and they had pre-typed notes for everyone to follow along. This was a really open environment and anyone could voice something that was on their mind. These huddles are a really productive piece that probably really help the success of their business because, often, people can go without trying to communicate their ideas and concerns, which can then backfire later. It was really good to see something like that before we started our day. For the rest of the day there, I mostly did a bunch of little jobs getting ready for the following weekend and week. I spent a lot of time doing inventory, scaling ingredients to see how much there was of each thing left. It may not have been a super exciting, action-packed day, but it was really interesting to learn how more things work behind the scenes there. When I got back, I started working on some of the adjustments I need to make for my intensive. I decided that making a cookbook online would be too unreliable, especially if I wanted to order one before school ended. So I bought a scrapbook and began making it by hand. This is going to be quite the project, but I know I can get it done in time. I'm excited to start seeing the final products of this intensive come into play!
Whenever people ask me what my favorite thing to make is, I always tell them, it's not necessarily something I make but, instead, something I do. One of my favorite things to do in the kitchen is to decorate cakes. For some people, this means just whipping on some frosting with a knife, but, for me, this part normally takes longer than the actual cake-making itself. I make my buttercream from scratch and usually make several different colors of it. Then I get piping bags out with all sorts of different tips and try to make my cakes look more and more elegant and delicious every time I decorate. I love doing this because it allows me to tap into my creativity much more than just baking a cake might. When baking, you have to stick to specific, measured ingredients or else the chemistry of everything in the oven could go wrong. But if I want to pipe a hundred flowers on my cake or cover it in rainbow sprinkles, it will still taste amazing. Today's class at Zingerman's, to my delight, was a cupcake class where the students made and decorated the cupcakes. Although I mostly assisted and did much of the "behind-the-scenes" work such as getting the class set up and scaling ingredients for future classes, I got to watch most of the class and even decorate a few of the demonstration cupcakes myself. What I loved most about watching this class was seeing the different ways everyone chose to decorate their cupcakes. Some had fondant flowers and leaves, some made underwater scenes, and some were just beautifully colored. Each person had fourteen cupcakes and I don't think a single one was decorated the same. Although tasks like this are super messy and possibly time-consuming, it's worth it. Today I could really see this simple decorating with only buttercream, sprinkles, and fondant really brought out a childlike joy in people that you don't see very often. The students weren't afraid to make a bad-looking cupcake; they just continued to pour more and more sprinkles right on top. (In fact, one woman poured about half a container on her cupcake, and it looked delightful (: ) Not by any bakery's standards were these "perfect" cupcakes, but they were something to be proud of. They were creative, imaginative, and, not to mention, delicious. Yes, it was one big cleanup job, and yes, some of the cupcakes were very messy, but the proud, smiles of all of the adults in the class made it worth it. They made it beautiful.
I wasn't scheduled to work at Zingerman's today, so I used it as another day to work on my cookbook and classes. I've made a lot of progress on the cookbook in the past few days, but I still have a long way to go. If I keep working hard at it, I should be done with it within a few more days of working on it. I do still need to find time to make some of the recipes that will be featured in it though so that I will have pictures. I realize that we only have a little over a week and a half left, so I need to get this book going really soon and order it if thats what I'm planning on doing. If it will take too long to order, I need to find some way to make it without having to ship an actual copy of it (which would probably be cheaper anyway). My goal is to finish the cookbook by the end of this weekend.. not sure if I'll get all the pictures in there though. I also started to plan out what I would be doing for the actual teaching aspect. I definitely wanted to teach a macaron class, but the problem is, wherever I am, it will be hard to have every person be involved during every step. All of the cooking classes that I've been to and helped with have had enough equipment for everyone, but macarons are very involved and require a lot of expensive equipment, so I may have to switch to something a little more manageable but still engaging and fun like a cake-decorating class.
Ms. Schlageter, who is teaching the Meditation and Literature intensive, also wants me to possibly teach her class something, so that will be another pleasant surprise of an opportunity to teach some kids. I was beginning to plan that out a little bit by researching recipes that she and her class might be interested in learning. Today was a bit of a shocker as I realized I don't have too much time left in the intensive considering I go to Zingerman's three times a week, so I really need to pick up the pace on the work I'm doing here and make sure I get it all done in time. But I'm excited to get these classes (of my own) rolling and teach some of my peers some of the things I know. Today was another full day spent working on my cookbook and preparing my cooking class material. I spent much of the day gathering recipes and looking back through things I had made and deciding what I wanted to put in the cookbook. I do wish I had done a better job of capturing the different recipes I have made in cooking classes and at home and such because I am beginning to forget many of them. Also, in order to make this book, I need pictures of most of the recipes, but, the problem is, I am lacking pictures of many of them and the pictures I do have aren't very god quality. So, eventually, I will need to make these recipes, so that I can get pictures of them. I also asked some students around the school today what they would want to see in a cooking/baking class and the vast majority of those I had asked wanted a baking class to learn how to make French macarons. So, I started planning out the ingredients and tools I need for that since I probably want to do something next week. I'm starting to realize I'm probably only going to get maybe a couple classes of my own in this intensive because all the time I'm going up to Ann Arbor doesn't leave me a ton of time here to get everything together. Before I have my cooking class, I still need to figure out not only where I'm going to have it, but also who is available to take it. I preferably want to do it during the school day since people have commitments after school, but if it comes to that, I can always do that. I also need to decide what I'm going to do with my cookbook once I make it and whether I am going to print just one for myself or make a couple copies for others.
Although today wasn't a super exciting day full of work in the kitchen, it was still nice to get a lot of work done that will help me in the long run for this intensive. "I would never even think to make crackers!" is the first thing almost everyone tells me when I said that today in class we made four different kinds of crackers... from scratch. From cheesy to seedy to salty, crackers are something that so many people eat every day with so many different shapes, flavors, and variations; but the convenience of buying them from the store trumps the process of making them, even though it actually is a really simple process, and they are way more delicious homemade! When I first got the bakehouse this morning (after waking up at 5:20 to get there by 7am), I wasn't sure what I'd be doing, but there was one spot available in that morning's class, so they said I could step in there. And–surprise–it was a cracker class. I was excited to step into this class because I never made crackers before, and I was hoping it would be something simple enough that I could make often for my family. Luckily, these recipes were very uncomplicated and similar to each other. We made four different kinds of crackers and they all varied by only a couple of ingredients. The amazing thing about these was that, as long as you replaced dry ingredients for dry and wet ingredients for wet, you could pretty much make your crackers with any flavor and seasoning you wanted. Often, these kinds of classes teach recipes that people wouldn't have the time, ingredients, or courage to try at home, but this class was extremely practical and something that doesn't take a lot of time or ingredients. Like all of the people who I had talked to after this class, I had never even thought to make crackers! But these delicious creations were much better than any cheez-it or wheat thin I could buy at the store. I take so many of my store purchases for granted–not only crackers–and if I were to just look up a simple recipe for some of the foods I buy, it may save me money, and it would definitely taste a lot better.
I think sometime people can get caught in this mindset that cooking is only meant for certain kinds of people and that you need to have a lot of time and fancy ingredients to make something worth the effort. But this class was proof that is not the case. Good cooking isn't finding the fanciest recipe and pouring your blood, sweat, and tears into it (although, sometimes it can be that as we saw yesterday). Good cooking just means taking some ingredients and putting your own twist on it and making a simple dish or snack into something homemade and unique to you. Taking something as common and mundane as crackers and making them from scratch would wow people just as much as something like a fancy cake would. Well, at least, they sure wowed me. Cooking - and learning, for that matter - takes time. Processes can’t be rushed and steps can’t be skipped. Today was my first day observing and participating in one of the cooking classes and this class was all about time and preparation. This class was six hours long and we made a dessert called Gateau St Honore, a French pastry for the French patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs, which was one of the most intricate and time consuming things I’ve done. It was an accumulation of some difficult French pastry I’ve dealt with in the past that was all layered on top of each other to make a cake that somewhat looked like a crown. I’ve found that in a lot of the cooking classes I’ve done, people are either there because it’s something social to do on a weekend or, often times, they seems to have minimal knowledge of the material taught in the classes. In this class, however, it was really amazing to see a range of experienced students, from people who never really bake that often to people who try intricate recipes at home quite often. The great thing was, though, that all of these people were so engaged in the class that all of their cakes were a success. And that’s not easy to do with a recipe like this, even with an instructor. The exciting environment made the class way more enjoyable. As we were all going through this crazy dessert-making process together, I realized what it is I love so much about these classes and the environment: here, it is okay to try new things. It is okay to fail. The students aren't expected to be good at making something right when they walk in the room. It seems that so often in our schools and in our jobs, we heavily praise those who are perfect at what they do, those who are comfortable, and those who already know the material being taught. People become too scared to try anything new in fear of failure. But what is amazing about these classes is that, once people step into the door of this workspace, that fear disappears. And with a dessert like this, I think people expect to fail... but they try anyway. There are no expectations, no consequences. Just a recipe, some ingredients, and their imaginations.
Just as a dessert like this one takes time (almost all day, for that matter) to prepare, it takes time to learn something and get good at it. These cooking classes are a way for people to tap back into their creativity and try something new without feeling judged or not good enough. These classes are a way for people to escape the world of expectations and enter this world filled with their own imagination... and really good tasting food. I'd like to think that's what St Honore would want all bakers to do each and every time they step foot in the kitchen. For years, I have been baking, cooking, diving deep into recipe research, and attempting new projects as often as I can in the kitchen. I've spent much of my culinary experiences over the past few years, absorbing as much as I can; now I realize it's time for me to start teaching some of that knowledge to others. As I start this independent study, I'm beginning to realize that a lot more goes into teaching others how to cook than I first thought. For example, today I began to create my cookbook which will be a collection of some of my favorite recipes that I've made. One difficulty I ran into today was that it is difficult to be concise while telling the reader everything they should know to make the recipe a success. Most people (at least I find I'm often this way) don't want an overcomplicated recipe but, simultaneously, want something that is going to "wow" them. As I began to write down some of my favorite recipes today, it became clear that I would have to write the instructions in a way that everyone would understand. Although today was a pretty simple day of just collecting past recipes I've done and asking people what they'd like to see in the cookbook and in future cooking classes, it was still a productive day. I accomplished a lot of work for the book and preparing for the cooking classes that I might not have gotten done if I hadn't set this day aside.
What I've realized over the past few years that I've been cooking and baking is that the recipes that stick out and excite me the most are those that are unique that not everyone thinks they can do. But after many searching through many online recipes from places like The New York Times or watching many episodes of The Great British Baking Show or Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, I've realized that those that stick out to me the most are not only the unique recipes and ways of cooking, but those that make those things seem easy and doable by anyone. And that is exactly what cooking is. It is doable by anyone. It just has to be taught and handed down. And I want my cookbook and my classes to be that outlet for people. I want people to be able to go home and recreate whatever I can in my kitchen–and do an even better job. |