Cupcake Frenzy!!!

Our first fundraiser of the semester to help earn money for our Denver field trip at the end of April was to make and sell four types of gourmet cupcakes. It was a huge success!!! Cupcake recipes were researched, each recipe was cost out for profits and then put into the test kitchen to make any adjustments. A school wide order form was prepared and sent out to all faculty and staff.  Excitement was everywhere in anticipation of these yummy cupcakes being delivered.  Overall, 500 cupcakes were sold, a nice profit was made and requests have come in to do it again for those that missed out.  Our next fundraiser is a St. Patricks day theme meal that is being prepared this week and orders will go out March 14th.  Watch for this fundraiser post and for more details on future fundraising events.


Types of cupcakes sold:

Andes Mint Cupcake

Peanut Butter and Jelly Cupcake

Salted Caramel and Chocolate Cupcake

Apple Pie Cupcake

This Is Not Your Ordinary Spaghetti Sauce

From Left to Right - Italian, Sugu and French Tomato Sauces

Entering the middle phase of our sauce unit, students learned and prepared 3 different categories of tomato sauces: Italian, French and Sugu.  The purpose of this lab was for the students to see number one, how easy it is to make a sauce from scratch. Two, how much better a homemade sauce can taste without the preservatives and added sugars. And three, the difference in taste by using the common ingredients that classify it as that category of tomato sauce.  This class seemed to lean towards the sugu sauce as their favorite (personally the Italian will always be mine). Great comments and participation came from this lab.

Roasted Italian Tomato Sauce

French Tomato Sauce

Arabiatta Sauce (Sugu)

Students then followed the tomato sauce lab with preparation of beef and chicken stock from scratch.  Bones and scraps were gathered, roasted and simmered, strained and simmered into a rich, flavorful stock.  The stock will be used in a future lab of Espagnole sauces and soups. Stay tuned :)

Sushi

In combination with the sandwich, hors d'oeuvre and salad units, we had a guest speaker, Sharon Bartlett, who is of Japanese decent come in and show us how to make sushi!  Sharon uses her expertise in sushi making, as well as her equipment, to show students how to create a sushi roll.

Students prepping sushi fillings

Sharon demonstrating how to assemble a sushi roll.

A lot of students had never tried sushi, let alone make it.

Maggie about to roll!

We were told by Sharon that a sushi roll should be filled with an odd number of ingredients. It is bad luck if you don't.  So students chose combinations of 3, 5 and some 7.  Ingredients to choose from included: smoked eel, imitation crabmeat, Japanese scrambled egg, simmered vegetables (celery & carrots in soy sauce), pickled ginger, avocado, shiitake mushrooms and of course seasoned rice. Ingredients were then rolled up in a toasted nori sheet (dried seaweed sheets), sliced and devoured. There were no leftovers in this lab :)

Larissa making sure she has an odd number of ingredients

Another delicacy was shared, Bean Curd.  A bean curd pocket was carefully opened and stuffed with the seasoned rice, then dipped into soy sauce.  Mmmmm .. It was tasty. 

A sushi roll and bean curd pod.

We would like to thank Sharon for her time and expertise. She even made the day more special for certain students by giving them a rolling mats and all students received a really nice set of chopsticks.

Thank you Sharon!

Sandwich Competition!

During the sandwich unit, students researched and found a recipe for hot open and closed sandwiches and the cold open and closed sandwiches.  They were then randomly put into groups of 3 and told to pick their favorite recipe in each group of the four categories brought to the group. The challenge was then on.  Each group picked out of a hat what type of sandwich they would be assigned and had to cost it out to bet $1.50 or less per sandwich. Not to surprising, but we ended up with a lot of vegetarian sandwiches!  Once a sandwich was chosen and met the competition requirement, students made out their market lists and awaited anxiously for the competition to be done the next day. They are a very competitive group and love competitions!  And the winner was ..............

Sandwich C!!!  An avocado cream cheese garlic spread with red pepper, red onion, lettuce, and cucumbers, all on a bagel.

Great job to all groups - all sandwiches were unique and delicious!

One Quarter Down, One to Go!!

As we end the 1st quarter of Culinary Arts II, I am reflecting on what we have accomplished and have yet to accomplish before all these seniors are set free!

The homemade ricotta cheese and homemade crème fraîche lab was a first for me and turned out very impressive.  Students made 3 batches of each and there were no leftovers!!  The students surprised their taste buds by trying their homemade goods in different recipes.  The first recipe was Lemon Ricotta Biscuits.  These biscuits were a winner! Delicious!! I must make these at home! (and yes they are biscuits, even thought they look like muffins) :)

The biscuits were used with the crème fraîche to make Strawberry Shortcakes.  The students gobbled them up!

The lab that followed the next day then utilized both the ricotta cheese and crème fraîche to make sure we had no waste.  Students experienced making Cheese Blintzes.  Although they have had a lot of experience with making crepes, blintzes posed a little different skill by only browning one side of the crepe, filling it with ricotta cheese, rolling it with the uncooked side exposed and then browning the rolled crepe in butter.  The blintz was finished off with crème fraîche and fresh cut strawberries.  The evaluations of this finished product was a little more mixed, a lot of students were expecting a real sweet crepe like dessert and this was not it.  The result was more of a creamy, tangy dish.  Overall this was a great experience for the class in making and tasting new items.