Day 3: Cupcakes, Creme Brulee, Showcase (Advanced)

 

Day 3: Cupcakes, Creme Brulee, Showcase

by Mackenzie Shaw

    

Chef Jessica giving instruction
for our subdivided schedule.
    For Art Of Cooking on Friday, January 6th, the advanced group cooked and brought food from home to share and showcase during lunch time, and when we arrived at the Bisonnet Campus, Chef Jessica described this interval between when we'd be making cupcakes and later making creme brulee.
  
 (Above) Isa P. and Niko making
chocolate for their group's
chocolate cupcakes, (below)
Kilali and Lulu making their lemon
frosting.



    We almost immediately started to work to budget our time for the rest of the schedule. Isa P., Aiden, and Niko's group made chocolate cupcakes with strawberry frosting, Alex, Kilali, and Lulu's group made lemon cupcakes with lemon cream frosting, and my, Isa C., and Talulah's group made carrot cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. To start off, Isa P.'s group got to work on their chocolate, Alex's group started on their batter while Alex started to try his hand at candying lemons for a topping, while my group began on our batter as well. 
     
     Shortly after finishing up our batters and putting them in the oven staggeringly, most of us got to work on our frosting, which we made using the mixers. My group got finished with our first batch of cupcakes
and decided to get started on the creme brulee mix toward the end of our alotted time. Once that part was finished up and we were getting closer to lunchtime, people started to prepare the food they brought for the showcase. Lots of people had things to heat up or cut up or pile on, so it took slightly longer than expected for everyone to get where they wanted to be with their food while their cupcakes were baking.    

   
Aiden presenting the food he
brought to the
class and Chef Jessica.

    To save time, while some people were finishing up the final touches for the   presentation of the food they brought, we started on presenting our food, how we   made it, and a little bit of backstory to the class, Chef Jessica, and Mr. Jacobs.   Everybody brought equally good, eclectic, and interesting food, including Isa C.'s   arepas, Isa P.'s pita, Talulah's chicken, Kilali's chicken Kyiv, Alex's chicken and   bacon-wrapped asparagus, Niko's chicken, Lulu's lasagna, Aiden's meat, and my   King Ranch casserole. 


Talulah and the chicken she brought.
     After we were done with our presentations and it was time to start eating, we each put out a seperate serving of our dishes to share with each other, and sat in the gym to start eating. After we were done eating the food we'd brought, the cleaning crew (Me, Lulu, Niko) started on the dishes while everybody else took their cupcakes out of the oven started on frosting them as well as resuming wherever some of us were on the creme bruleee process. Once we were done with that and had finished up with cleanup, we offered some of our cupcakes to the rest of the Post Oak community, as a "thank you" to them for letting us use their space.                                                                                                                             
    In the end of the first (partial) week of the Art of Cooking J- term, I have learned the most about what it means to collaborate creatively. Food is not only power, but a form of art, and artistic collaboration can create amazing outcomes and lessons; about how collaboration cannot always be 50/50, and it's ok to divide workload by the group members' strengths and weaknesses in order to achieve the best possible end product.

Sharing the food we made in Art
of Cooking with Post Oak staff members. 

    My personal favorite part of the day which I believe is somewhat shared with the rest of the group, was when we got to sit down and take a short brain-break and eat the food we brought for eachother. Food, more often than not, brings people together or should bring people together rather than divide them apart, which is why it seemed like a positive choice to not include the competition-portion of this exercise this year. It felt like a therapeutic shared experience that we all created something that was at least somewhat challenging and got to see it at work. 






                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

                                                                                                                                                  











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