Cooking with Asia

Prep Time: 15 Min

Cook Time: 10 Min

Ready In: 25 Min

Servings: 9 - 10

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup margarine, softened

• 1/2 cup white sugar

• 1/2 cup brown sugar

• 1 egg

• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1 cup all-purpose flour

• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 2 tablespoons and 2 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder

• 1-1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).

2. Line cookie sheet with parchment.

3. In a medium bowl, cream together the margarine, white sugar and brown sugar until smooth.

4. Beat in the egg, then stir in the vanilla.

5. Sift in the flour, baking soda, salt and cocoa powder; mix well.

6. Stir in the chocolate chips.

7. Use a scoop to drop cookies on the prepared cookie sheets.

8. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven.

9. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 2 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.\

When I knew what we were making in class I remembered when we made these with the grade 8's at the spend a day. I liked when we made them the first time and I enjoyed this time too. My favorite part of the lab was when we were able to have a cookie because they were so delicious. When we were making these in the kitchen it was easy and wasn’t too complicated of a recipe. In the process of getting all the ingredients prepped we messed up and lost count of how much cocoa powder we measured. It was a tiny set back because we had to measure it again but it was a fixable mistake. We actually did pretty good making these cookies and I think that we had a good consistent size and we took them out of the oven at a perfect time. A big mistake that we made in this lab though was that we had the temperature at the wrong setting. We had it at 350 degrees when it should have been 375 degrees but it was fixed easily because all we had to do was keep them in the oven for a little while longer. In class we learned that brown sugar needs to be packed tight into the cup which I didn’t know before this commercial cooking class and that helped me during this cooking lab. Before when I baked things with brown sugar I would just put brown sugar into the cup rather than packing it in like you're supposed to. If I would make these again at home I'm thinking that I would need to pay more attention to the temperatures and I also think that I need to watch the cookies closely so that they don’t overcook. 

Makes 1 – 8 x 8 inch pan

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup (50 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder

• 1/2 cup (64 grams) all-purpose flour

• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 1/2 cup (1 stick or 113 grams) unsalted butter

• 1 cup (200 grams) sugar

• 2 eggs

• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Grease and flour and 8 x 8 inch glass baking dish.

3. In a medium bowl, combine the cocoa, flour, salt, and baking powder; set aside.

4. In a medium saucepan, melt the butter. Once melted, remove from heat and whisk in the sugar until combined.

5. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

6. Stir in the vanilla.

7. Whisk in the dry ingredients until combined and pour the batter into the prepared pan.

8. Bake for 30 – 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out with a few crumbs clinging to it.

9. Allow brownies to cool completely before serving.

Recipe by Darla, Bakedom

So I had to make these at home and when I did it made my house smell so good. I was kind of scared because I was sure that they weren't going to be a good recipe but they turned out being really good. they were nice and chewy with a crispy outside and thats the kind of brownie that I like. My mom and sister really enjoyed them too which made me happy. When I was making these it was fun and it was easy. I did really good in preparing everything and I went through all the instructions thoroughly to make sure I did everything right. I don’t necessarily think that I messed up during the recipe but the only thing I could think of that I might have done wrong was not melting the butter enough. I'm not sure if I did because when I put the sugar in it didn’t melt to a fine liquid It was still kind of grainy but I didn’t know if it was meant to be like that or not. The brownies still ended up being really good though. In class I learned on how to put parchment paper into the 8x8 pan correctly. If I wasn’t shown that then I probably wouldn’t have put parchment paper at all I would probably just dump the brownie mix into the pan. I'm going to keep this recipe because I really enjoyed it and someday I think that I'll make them again and when I do I'm going to make sure that do everything right.

Prep Time: 10 Min Cook Time: 20 Min Ready In: 35 Min

Original Recipe Yield 12 popovers

Ingredients

• 1 egg – room temperature

• 1/2 cup milk – room temperature

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

• 1/8 teaspoon baking soda

• 2 tablespoons butter, melted

• 1/3 cup cinnamon sugar

Directions

1. Preheat an oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Grease a mini muffin pan.

2. Whisk together the egg and milk in a bowl until evenly blended; set aside.

3. Stir together the flour, cinnamon, and baking soda in a separate large bowl.

4. Pour the egg mixture into the flour mixture and whisk until smooth; being careful not to overbeat.

5. Fill muffin cups 1/2 full.

6. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes. Do not open the oven door.

7. Place cinnamon sugar in a brown bag for shaking and set aside.

8. Remove popovers from oven and let cool in pan for 5 minutes.

9. Roll popovers in melted butter then place in brown paper bag; shake until the popovers are evenly coated. Serve immediately.

Source: Allrecipes.com

Making these popovers were easy to make and they were really tasty. They were just like mini donuts at a fair but they were hollow and better. When we were making these it was really easy because there wasn’t much to do and we had plenty of time to do other things. We worked well together and we all made sure that we didn’t overmix it or do anything wrong. Something that we did that went and was fun was when we covered the popovers with butter then cinnamon and sugar. It was messy but it was pretty fun doing that part of the recipe. I was kind of disappointed when the popovers didn’t grow a lot in size like the ones in the picture. I thought our popovers weren't hollow at first because they were small but they were perfect which was good. When we made them I was scared that they'd collapsed but I'm glad that they were hollow and came out the way they did. I think that the only thing that we did wrong this time was that we dropped some batter on the muffin tins but we wiped that up before it went into the oven. In class I learned that you need to only grease the bottom so that they stick to the bottom and that you don’t grease the sides. I actually really liked these and I know my mom and my sister likes mini donuts so I think I'll make this for the home lab. This time though instead of putting the sugar and cinnamon in a bowl and it getting messy I'm going to use a Ziploc bag to decrease the mess.

Prep time: 15 min. Cook time: 15 min.

Ingredients

2 c. all-purpose flour

¼ c. white sugar

2 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

¼ c. butter, chilled

1 apple – peeled, cored and shredded

½ c. milk

1 tbsp. milk

1 tbsp. white sugar

¼ tsp. ground cinnamon

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

2. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, soda, and salt into a large bowl.

3. Cut in butter or margarine until crumbly.

4. Add shredded apple and milk. Stir to form a soft dough.

5. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface.

6. Knead gently 8 to 10 times. DON’T OVERHANDLE

7. Divide dough in half. Pat into two 6-inch circles.

8. Place on parchment-lined. Brush tops with milk, and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.

9. Score each into 6 pie-shaped wedges. CALL ME over to check your piece sizes.

10. Bake at 425 degrees F for 15 minutes, or until browned and risen. Serve warm with butter.

I really enjoyed making these at home because they were easy to make and in my opinion they tasted great. I don’t think that I did it correctly though. On the recipe it said to score the dough into six pieces so I just assumed that I had to make indents but I'm not sure if the scones were supposed to be that big. They were about the size of my hands so I'm pretty sure I read the instructions wrong somewhere because they were so huge. When I was making these I think that I did pretty good making the scones because they ended up tasting really great. I also messed up a couple of times though when I was making them. I made a little mistake and then I made a worse mistake. My first mistake was that I didn’t check if we had parchment paper before I started gathering everything together and only by the time I was done did I realize I didn’t have parchment paper to put them on. But good thing that I found a rubber parchment paper substitute to use that worked just as well. My other mistake was that I overmixed the dough and I was playing with it too much which I should've known not to do that but I only knew I overmixed it when it was sticking to everything. Something that I learned in class that helped me in my kitchen was how to score. I wouldn’t have known otherwise what to do if I hadn't learned it in class. If I were to make this again I would definitely make sure I'm prepared with all of the materials I need. I'd also make sure that I don’t overwork the dough since now I know how easy it is to overwork it.

Prep Time: 15 Min

Cook Time: 25 Min

Ready In: 40 Min

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour

• 1/3 cup sugar

• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

• 1 egg

• 1/3 cup milk

• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil

• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1 cup blueberries

Directions

1. In a bowl, combine the first six ingredients.

2. Combine the egg, milk, oil and vanilla.

3. Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients just until moistened.

4. Gently fold in blueberries. Fill greased or paper-line muffin cups two-thirds full.

5. Bake at 375 degrees F for 25-27 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

6. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack.

This cooking lab we made blueberry muffins and I really enjoyed them. It was super easy to make them and they tasted delicious. When we were making these in my group we did pretty good on leaving some lumps in the batter and we were also fast workers so we had a lot of time to spare afterwards. When they came out of the oven they were a nice golden brown color and I think we took them out at the perfect time. The muffin that I tried was really good and I enjoyed that the whole wheat flour made it have a healthier flavor rather than it being too sweet. The one thing that we didn’t do so well was that we folded it in too much and the blueberries began to defrost and it made our dough blue. In the end though it didn’t look as bad as it did before it was baked. When we were making this I thought back to what we learned and knew to make a well in the dry ingredients so that I could add the wet ingredients into it. It made it easier to stir them together and it was more efficient so that we didn’t have to overmix the batter. If I ever do make this at home I'm thinking that I'd need to be even quicker to make sure that the muffins don’t become too blue. To make this at home I would also need to make sure that I don’t overmix the batter because occasionally I accidently overmix.

Ingredients

• 1 cup all-purpose flour

• 2 teaspoon baking powder

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 1/4 c shortening

• 6 tablespoons milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

2. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

3. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt.

4. Cut shortening in until mixture has a fine crumb texture.

5. Stir in milk with a fork to make a soft dough.

6. Knead 8 to 10 times, and then roll out to a thickness of at least 1/2 inch.

7. Cut into rounds with a cookie or biscuit cutter.

8. Place on cookie sheet, and allow to rest for a five minutes.

9. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes. Serve warm.

Source: Allrecipes.com

I've never liked tea biscuits that much so when we made these I wasn't exactly excited to taste them. It was fun making them though, the part that I like about it was that when we cut in the fat into the flour because I liked mashing it. When we made these I was nervous that we accidentally overworked the dough but they came out really nice. We must have done well because they had a nice golden brown colour and I actually liked the taste of them, which was surprising to me. Too bad there wasn't much jam though, I had mine with sugar and cinnamon so it was still pretty good. We had a little complication in the kitchen and that was that I must not have greased the pan with enough spray because at the end the biscuits stuck to the bottom. But good thing Makayla knew how to get them out because when I tried I was breaking them apart, which would have made them less appealing. During this cooking session I used my prior knowledge of kneading I learned in class to knead the dough properly. My mom really enjoys tea biscuits so when she found out I made them she wanted me to make them at home and if I do I'll make sure that I grease the pan better and that I don't overwork the dough. I really enjoyed making these because I've never made them before and it was a new experience for me and I always like learning how to make new things. 

Servings : 12

DAY 1 - Pizza Crust

Ingredients

• 1 c. flour plus about 1 c. more

• 2 ¼ tsp. pizza crust yeast

• 1 ½ tsp. sugar

• ¾ tsp. salt

• 2/3 c. very warm water – like bathtub water

• 3 tbsp. vegetable oil

Directions

1. In a large bowl, combine 1 c. flour, yeast, sugar, and salt.

2. Add very warm water. Mix until well blended, about 1 minute.

3. Add enough flour to make a soft dough (3/4 to 1 ¼ c.)

4. Dough should form a ball and will still be slightly sticky.

5. Knead on a floured surface adding additional flour if needed, until smooth and elastic; about 4 minutes.

6. Cover in plastic wrap and label.

Day 2

Ingredients

• Pizza dough

• 2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened

• 1 cup mayonnaise

• 1 (1 ounce) package dry Ranch-style dressing mix

• 1 cup fresh broccoli, chopped

• 1 cup chopped tomatoes

• 1 cup chopped green bell pepper

• 1 cup chopped cauliflower

• 1 cup shredded carrots

• 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (190 degrees C).

2. Roll out the pizza dough onto a pizza pan.

3. Bake crust for 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Once finished cooking, remove crust from oven and let cool 15 minutes without removing it from the baking sheet.

4. In a small mixing bowl, combine cream cheese, mayonnaise, and dry Ranch dressing.

5. Spread the mixture over the cooled crust.

6. Arrange broccoli, tomato, green bell pepper, cauliflower, shredded carrots, and cheddar cheese over the cream cheese layer.

7. Chill for one hour, slice and serve.

So before we even made the vegetable ranch pizza I thought that I wouldn’t enjoy it. I was excited though to make the pizza dough and spread it out like how the professionals do, although I wasn’t very good at it. During this cooking lab we really worked the dough but it was really hard to make it the perfect texture and smoothness. In the end it still came out fine, it came out hard but softened up afterwards. We really worked well in the kitchen and even though we came close to not having enough time we finished just in time. We all worked together to chop and slice the vegetables and we all had fun putting all the vegetables on. Something that helped me during this cooking lab that I learned in class was that when you get down to small pieces while shredding you use the palm of your hand to finish it off. In the end though after most of the guys ate a piece of pizza and liked it, I was curious on how it tasted. Before I had a taste it wasn’t exactly appealing to the eyes but when I had a bite it was so good. If I were to make this at home I’d use fewer vegetables because they seemed to be falling off a lot. But overall I really liked this recipe and it surprised me because I don’t like raw cauliflower.

For my homelab in the soup section I made Creamed Broccoli soup. I really enjoyed it at school so decided to go with this soup. When I made this at school I showed my mom that i was making that for my homelab and she didn't like the way that it looked but she was willing to try it. When she tried it she really liked it, she even wanted me to make the same recipe except double the size so she could have more. The thing that went well when I was making the recipe was that I was working quick and I was able to make it before anyone came home so they could try it out. But I had a complication while making the soup and it was that when I was gathering all the ingredients I didnt have the right soy sauce. I thought we had regular soy sauce but we only had the substitution for it which had been really different from the real soy sauce. Other than that the soup turned out fine, I was nervous that it would have a different taste because the substitute soy sauce didn't taste like the real thing but it ended up being fine. Something that I learned in class and used when I was cooking at home was how to chop and slice everything properly. Before commercial cooking I didn't know that much cooking terminolgy and I probably would have looked up online how to do things properly. I really liked this soup and it's texture and I'm glad that my mom enjoyed it too.

1st layer

½ cup margarine

⅓ cup white sugar

½ tsp. vanilla

1 cup flour

Cream together margarine, sugar and vanilla. Then mix in flour. Spread on bottom of 8X8” pan.

2nd layer

8 oz. cream cheese

½ cup white sugar

1 tsp. vanilla

Cream together cream cheese, white sugar, and vanilla. Spread evenly over 1st layer.

3rd layer

4 – 5 apples

⅓ cup white sugar

1 tsp. cinnamon

½ cup sliced almonds

Peel and core apples, slice thinly. Place sliced apples in a medium sized bowl. In a small bowl mix together sugar and cinnamon. Add cinnamon mixture to the apples and mix together. Put apples on cheese layer, sprinkle ¼ cup of sliced almonds over top. Bake at 450ºF for 10 min. Turn oven down to 400ºF for 25 minutes.

Source: Ms. Mann

 When I was reading over this recipe before we were going to make it I was excited because I saw that it pretty much had the same cream cheese stuff that we had in the fruit pizza. I really liked the cream cheese spread we used in this recipe and overall I really liked this recipe. In our kitchen Maricar was cutting and peeling the apples and I think that she did a really good job cutting the apples into uniform slices. Another thing that went well in our kitchen was that Makayla really flattened out and smoothed out the dough in the pan. Even the guys across us in the kitchen were amazed and they thought that Mrs.Sutter did it but when they found out Makayla did it they kept asking her how she made it so well. When I was smoothing out the cream cheese I was having trouble and it was lifting off from the dough. That and the fact that we put a tablespoon of cinnamon instead of a teaspoon was the only thing that we did wrong. If I ever make this again I'll make sure I measure the ingredients properly and I'll cool the dough before I put on the cream cheese like you suggested. A skill that I incorporated into this cooking lab from class was how to peel an apple with a knife because when I helped peel apples it was easy because I actually knew what I was doing.

Prep time: 15 minutes Cook time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

6 or 7 ripe plum tomatoes (about 1 1/2 lbs)

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar

6-8 fresh basil leaves, chopped.

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 baguette French bread or similar Italian bread

1/4 cup olive oil

Directions:

1. Make sure there is a top rack in place in your oven. Turn on the oven to 450°F to preheat .

2. Prepare the tomatoes first. Score an “X” on the bottom of the tomato. Parboil the tomatoes for one minute in boiling water that has just been removed from the burner.

3. Dip tomatoes in an ice bath. Using a sharp small knife, remove the skins of the tomatoes.

4. Once the tomatoes are peeled, cut them in halves or quarters and remove the seeds and juice from their centers. Also cut out and discard the stem area. Why use plum tomatoes instead of regular tomatoes? The skins are much thicker and there are fewer seeds and less juice.

5. Chop up the tomatoes finely.

6. Put tomatoes, garlic, 1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil, vinegar in a bowl and mix.

7. Add the chopped basil. Add salt and pepper to taste.

8. Slice the baguette on a diagonal about 1/2 inch thick slices. Coat one side of each slice with olive oil using a pastry brush. Place on a cooking sheet, olive oil side down. You will want to toast them in the top rack in your oven, so you may need to do these in batches depending on the size of your oven. Once the oven has reached 450°F, place a tray of bread slices in the oven on the top rack. Toast for 5-6 minutes, until the bread just begins to turn golden brown.

9. Align the bread on a serving platter, olive oil side up.

10. Place some topping on each slice of bread and serve immediately or the bread may get soggy.

Yield: Makes 24 small slices

When I heard we were making bruschetta I didn't know what it was but I had idea. I actually thought bruschetta was like spinach and cheese on a baguette so I guess I was pretty close to knowing what it was. I told my mom and she said we've had it at a restaurant before and then it clicked in my head and i knew what is was that we were making. When my group and I made this we did everything right or so it seemed. The thing that we did really well was peeled the skin off the tomatoes. When we took them out the hot water we put them in ice and then the skin started peeling off and we didn't even need a knife to peel it off. It came off really easy and I was glad that we did it right. This was a really simple recipe and it was hard to mess up but the only thing I can think of that we may have done wrong is not mince the garlic small enough. If I were to make this recipe again I would want to make the whole thing, I was kind of dissapointed that we weren't able to make the whole thing but that's fine. When we minced the garlic I remembered that you should always keep the tip of the knife on the cutting board and almost do a rocking motion back and forth to get a good mince. Another helpful tip I used from class was that you smash the garlic with the knife and it makes it easier to remove the peel. When making this recipe me and my group were suprised on how quick and simple it was. To me the taste of the mixture was a bit bland and had a really strong garlic taste, I don't necessarily like garlic so that may be the reason why I didn't realy prefer this recipe.