Week 2 - Cookies

Day 5 (we skipped day 4 for MLK, and in this missed a day of gluten free baking, which really isn't baking at all; you can't make real bread without flour, sorry gluten-freers)

Chocolate Chip cookies

Oatmeal Raisin

Peanut Butter Cookies

Coconut Macaroons with Raspberry and Apricot filling (need some work, not my favorite recipe)

Sugar Cookies and brownies (which apparently I didn't take pictures of)

Did you know there are 8 types of cookies?? Drop, Icebox, Bar (which is actually a biscotti not a cookie bar like you're thinking), Sheet (which is the cookie bar like you're thinking, or a brownie), CutOut, Pressed, Rolled/Molded, Wafer cookie.

We were called next door to the cooking class to try some of their food. The theme? African...couscous and garbanzo beans galore, but quite tasty.

Day 6

Coconut Triangles (actually really good!)

Here's the Recipe (I'm writing it just as I received it, you can convert it to cups if you want :) )

13.5 oz Pastry Flour

10.5 oz Brown Sugar

12 oz Butter, cold

12 oz Eggs (figure that one out, UGH)

3 tsp Vanilla

 1 dash salt

1.5 tsp Baking Powder

13 oz Coconut

11 oz Pecans

1 lb. Brown Sugar

1. Mix together flour, brown sugar and butter inly until crumbly.

2. Spread into the bottom of a lightly sprayed 1/2 sheet pan and bake at 325 for about 10 minutes, or until lightly browned.

3.While it is baking, combine the remaining ingredients until well mixed and carefully pour this mixture over the hot, baked layer, continue to bake until firm.

4. Cool for 10 minutes on rack and then place in coller. Chill for at least 1/2 hours, then cut into triangles.

Spritz Cookies which are a really thick dough squeezed through a pastry bag into different patterns. The top ones have jam on them.

Biscotti, I didn't know they were baked twice. We flavored ours dried cranberries with almonds and there's a cinnamon swirl throughout. Our instructor wanted to keep some for an open house that the school is having next week so I went to put them in the box and another student full of attitude said, "I don't think those are the quality that Chef is looking for, you can donate those to charity." Weeeeeelllll then, they were pretty darn good if I may say so myself. (FYI, we can't take any of our baked goods home, the school donates them to Sharing and Caring Hands so at least they don't go to waste, but don't worry we do throw away anything that's really bad....no one deserves that.)

Flourless Chocolate Chewies (after mixing them with almost 3 lbs. of powdered sugar I couldn't even bring myself to try them, but apparently they're really not too bad for gluten free).

We also made Tuile cookies which you roll into a thin batter and as they come out of the oven you place on something while warm and they conform to that shape. We ran out of time though. The entire class ran out of time and we got lectured quite thoroughly about not using our time correctly. Our punishment...we didn't take our test....Chef needs to work on what he thinks is threatening... (don't get me wrong I'm certainly intimidated by him, but really)

Any interesting science this round? Nothing too wild or crazy, we also had a long lecture on Day 6 about Nutrition, eating trends, ingredients etc. I happen to find all of it quite interesting. And for those of you who know of my feelings on sugars (and for those of you that don't I think all the sweeteners are just chemicals and can't be good for you even if less "calories") I asked Chef his opinion is the less processed, the better. So white refined sugar is indeed processed so perhaps there are other alternatives, honey being one of them actually, that is very sweet and not exactly "healthy," but it tends to be all natural and not processed, so it does have quite a plus going for it.... (or the opportunity anyway). I need to play more with substitution in recipes and see what I come up with while still making it taste good. I also need to work on making my products uniform on the production side (all triangles the same size and such).

Next week breads!!! Mmm I love yeast

Listening to Jacob Dylan

I tried this recipe this evening, I know it sounds really odd, but it's truly GOOD. I used chicken sausage instead of bacon.