Cake Pops!

Something really cute to share. I love reading Bakerella's blog and she always has great ideas for desserts. She is also the creator of Cake Pops! I really hope to make these one day soon. I've even bought the lollipop sticks already! Heh heh~

Reflection: Microteaching

For groups that have finished their mirco teaching, I'm sure that you too feel that a great weight has been lifted off your shoulders. I remember feeling really tensed and scared the night before the session all the way till the end of the lesson. I could not sleep the night before. Yes I have to work on my anxiety issues. Haha.

Actually now that my mirco teaching is over, i am finally able to see the usefulness of it:
1. It forces us to master at least 1 recipe (especially the recipe you are teaching) and to learn many others from the other teachers.
2. It allows you to learn about your your weaknesses and strengths when it comes to working in the kitchen and teaching.
3. It allows us to observe others when they are teaching and to learn from their mistakes and absorb their good points.
4. We learn how to work together in a team. This is important as in schools, we will have to work with the other teachers, most of whom come from different backgrounds and may have not been your friend in the first place.

For myself, I have learnt many new things about myself:
1. I enjoy baking on my own free time.
2. I need to be louder.
3. I need to be more confident in myself.
4. I need to watch the terms that i use during class, such as correct scientific terms etc.
5. I need to manage the lesson flow better to ensure that i can complete the lesson within the stipulated time.
6. I need to improve on my plating techniques.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my team mates, Nurul, Raudhah, and Azyan. Thanks for working with me and great job!

Now that I have finished my mirco teaching, I shall enjoying learning more recipes from the other teachers. Good luck to you all!

Taken from: http://moon-muse.tumblr.com/post/9711505581/everybody-is-a-genius-but-if-you-judge-a-fish

A Royal Tea Party.

Our group's microteaching is over! And I think we've learnt so much from it. My expectations of it was indeed very different from the outcome of it. Firstly, nerves got to me. Secondly, my cookies for demo got burnt. Thirdly, unexpected situations in the classroom which I prayed didnt happen, happened.

As a reflection of the entire experience, I really feel that I've got so much more to learn as to how to manage the class well and also having to deal with unexpected situations. During my lesson, one pair had their cookie mixture too crumbly a consistency which resulted in the cookie not forming properly. While I had hoped that everyone would have a 100% success rate with that recipe, the unexpected still happened. I felt that the students would already have known how to cream the mixture well since they just learnt it a mere week ago and thus, I didnt do a demo on that. I sort of "tapped" on their supposed prior knowledge and I just assumed they knew. Another incident in class, was that a student got her hand scalded by hot water. Amidst all the nerves, the chaos in class and the mess, it was still an urgent issue to deal with.

I guess this depicts and relates well to a real class context whereby these are real issues that may occur. Especially so, when we do go out to schools, we are dealing with children of a younger age group than the people we dealt with during microteaching. More issues are bound to surface and it's a matter of management and problem-solving and quick thinking that has to be at the back of our minds while conducting a class.

For now, enjoy the pictures below!

Eggtarts again!

Hello its me and my egg tarts again. Yes i bake them everyweek. Haha. I actually find it fun and a form of stress-reliever and its such an accomplishment to be able to create something tasty.

Just some minor updates (which may be alittle late)
- recipes will be printed
- the tart pastry is alittle greasy but you dont have to grease the tart mould
-when you fill the tart with egg custard make sure there are no air bubbles if not there will be unsightly holes in your egg tart.
-you have to watch the custard closely if not it'll be wrinkly and ugly

Ok some pictures of what to expect

What the dough looks like. It's ok if its sticky and oily. Please dont add too much flour if not it'll taste like biscuits.

Before baking the tart. You may use a bit of flour when shaping the dough if u find it too sticky

Finished product! Yummy!

Hope you enjoy tomorrow's session and hope you'll like the egg tart recipe! :)

Cookies!

So I attempted the Chewy Dark Chocolate and Orange Cookie Recipe from Wilton's the other day, as recommended by Ms Chin and Ms Soo. But The turnout was rather... bleargh? Okay, the taste was awesome and rich and yummy, with a tinge of orange. So that definitely wasn't the issue. However, it was more of the external outcome of the cookie itself.

It turned out too soft and cake-like instead of firm like a cookie's supposed to be. I wonder what could be wrong. Could it have been my creaming? Had I creamed it improperly? Could it be the proportions of my ingredients? Did I convert correctly? Or could it be too fast a baking time? Or! Was the cookie even supposed to be like that in the first place? I wonder and panic at the same time, thinking I might have the same troubles again if unresolved soon! :(

So let me get this straight, we learnt in school (TP) that 1 cup = 250g, no? For this batch, I used 250g as a basis of 1 cup. Before posting this post however, I searched online and they actually have variations to it which falls around ~225g. That's 25g of a difference! Doesn't that count as a significant difference that may have implications to the science behind the baking?

Chewy Dark Chocolate and Orange Cookie by Wilton
http://www.wilton.com/recipe/Chewy-Dark-Chocolate-and-Orange-Cookies

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup butter softened
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 4 teaspoons freshly grated orange peel or finely chopped candied orange peel
• vegetable pan spray

Instructions:

1) Preheat oven to 375° F.

2) Cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. On low speed beat in flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt. Stir in orange peel.
3) Spray cookie scoop with vegetable pan spray and drop onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 9-12 minutes. Remove from sheet and cool on wire rack.

Picture 1: Look how nicely it rose! Nice dome-shaped cookies!

 Picture 2: It deflated once out of the oven.

Something is definitely wrong somewhere.

Could it have been due to a lack of cooking time?

Could it be how I creamed the batter?

Picture 3: This was taken after being cooled for ~15minutes.

It was still very soft, very cake-like, very fragile. It did not firm up. 

Look at the interior, it looks more cake-like than it does a cookie.

The air cells? Zilch. Or atleast very very minute and tiny.

---

What could have gone wrong!? Please advice! Thank you lovely people~

Update on Egg tarts! :)

I baked another batch of egg tarts last saturday! Seems to be much better than the previous 2 as they were snapped up by my friends and family as soon as they were out of the oven (might be due to the fact that i baked a smaller batch)

Egg Tart Recipe ( for about 20 2.4" tarts)

Ingredients:

For butter pastry:

125g butter - chilled

60g of icing sugar

1 egg beaten

200g plain flour - sifted

½ tsp of vanilla extract

For egg custard:

100ml of water

80g of sugar

3 eggs

100ml of milk

½  tsp of vanilla extract

Method

1.       Preheat the oven at 175 degrees celcius

2.       Mix flour and  icing sugar into a mixing bowl. Mix in butter with a fork till it is in small crumbs.

3.       Stir in vanilla extract and egg till it forms a dough.

4.       Wrap in cling foil and leave in the fridge for about 10 minutes to rest.

5.       While waiting, melt 80g of sugar in 100ml of water. Turn off the flame once sugar dissolves. Leave it to cool.

6.       Take the dough out of the fridge. Take about a 1.5 inch ball of dough and shape it into the molds using thumbs only. Make sure that the base is not too thick. The sides should be higher than the mold.

7.       Place the molds into the oven and bake for 10 minutes or until it turns white.

8.       Whisked the eggs for the egg custard. Do not whisk till frohy

9.       When the sugar mixture has cooled, added in the milk , whisked eggs and vanilla extract and stir to mix well.

10.   Strain the egg mixture and pour it into the molds after they have been removed from the oven.

11.   Place the molds with the egg custard filling into the oven for another 15- 20 minutes (18 mins for my oven. I usually set the timer for 15 mins and check to see how the tarts are coming along. If they are still wobbly i'll leave them in for another 3-5 mins). Watch the tarts near the 15^th minute. If you see the custard about to puff up, take it out of the oven. If not it'll wrinkle when cooled. Another way to check if the custard is cooked is to see if it wobbles when shaken. If it wobbles, it is not cooked. (Another recipe also recommends sticking a toothpick into the custard. If it stands upright, then the custard is cooked.)

12.   Place the tarts on the cooling rack for 10 mins.

Result:

Looks good? I might want to try baking the custard together with the tart to see if the bottom is soggy if i use this method (thanks Miss Chin!)
If there is time, i may also try using soya bean milk as i'm actually lactose-intolerant.

Reflection on Lesson plans

Back when I was doing my internship in Woodgrove Secondary School, my Senior Teacher( (ST; Mdm Paramjit) emphasize that lesson plan is important especially during my Practicum. She mention that it should cater to my own comfort-ability and lesson plan should include things that you might predict it happening in the class.

True enough, Ms chin and Dr. Mok emphasize the same thing in our Home Economic and Teaching clothing and textile tutorial in NIE. 

 Through out the critique session, I noticed that each lesson plan is different and of course, there are some key pointers that I believe will be useful for me in crafting out my very own lesson plan.

Precise and Detailed: Lesson plans serves as a guideline for teachers to conduct their lesson and in the event where the teacher forget on what activity to do next, they can always refer to the lesson plan as it provide both the timing and the activity. It is also recommended to include dialogues for teacher who are not very good in their language.  

Student's Anticipated Response: In my opinion, I believe that this section of the lesson plan helps teachers to create rapport with the students as by anticipating their response, teachers can come up with a different sets of question to pose to the students as to engage them in learning. This will also help in their critical thinking. 

Timing/ Duration: The duration for each activity should be sufficient and should not be too short as it might eat in into the other activity. When setting a lesson plan, teachers should not be too ambitious as to only set aside 2-3 minutes on a certain activity and it is also important to consider the students learning capability/ students profile.

In the nutshell, I hope that I would be able to craft out a good lesson plan that would not only assist me but also engage the students through my whole lesson.

Cream Puffs Madness!

Hello everyone! This is my first attempt in baking cream puffs and I hope to receive your valuable comments  as to how I can do it better. I believe there are still room for improvements, especially on my éclairs (which I failed, on both tries sadly!)

Anyway, here’s the recipe I used for the choux pastry. It makes about 15 mini cream puffs!

40g plain flour

¼ level tsp salt

70ml water

1 level tsp sugar

25g butter

1 egg

Before I begin, I went to youtube to view videos on how to go about making the choux pastry. By the looks of it, the preparation looked very simple. Not until I started on my own… This was the outcome of my paste and the puffs on my first trial! Such failure L

As you can see, my batter was not thick like how it should be. Reason being, when I was beating egg into the mixture, the paste turned out to be sticky and elastic. I thought that should not the case, hence I added another egg to the paste.

Upon baking, I did not watch the baking temperature carefully hence the oven became too hot. The pastries rose, however, the exterior was already baked within the first 15 minutes. Choux pastries require baking time of about 30 minutes. Hence, the interior was still mildly "wet" and not fully baked, and the pastries started to flatten when it was left to cool.

I called up my group mate, Azyan and she came to the rescue. She told me that one egg should be sufficient as the paste is meant to be sticky and elastic. This time, I followed the recipe diligently and took note of the baking temperature and time. And, these are the outcomes of my batter and choux pastries…

Yes, my éclairs were burnt despite them being under my watch! Hmph! But I think my oven has the tendency to heat up too quickly? Or was the paste too little for éclairs? I need to give the éclairs another try next time. But nonetheless, my puffs turned out the way it should be! It rose and did not deflate, not too soft and with a hollow interior J

On to the confectioner’s custard next! The recipe…

25g butter

25g flour

125ml milk

25g sugar

1 egg yolk

¼ tsp vanilla essence

And here’s the outcome! I’m still unsure if the texture of the custard should be like the one I made. It was a tad lumpy; probably because I did not mix in the flour properly. Otherwise, my brother commented that it was not too sweet and tastes good!

Here’s the final product- my mini cream puffs. I still need to master my execution and of cause, this is to better facilitate my micro teaching later. Keep the comments coming in… Will really appreciate it J