Kid's Baking Club #2

Baking club #2 was held Saturday, 10/6/2012

Last session, the kids were insistent on baking German Chocolate Cake at the next meeting.

I thought it might be too complicated, but decided to give it a try, including a Black Forest cake for variety!

Megan was in charge this time of researching and finding the recipes. She took on the challenge - but didn't copy the URLs. And, as we were doing final ingredient shopping, realized two things:

1. She had copy/pasted the steps for the German Chocolate topping to a Black Forest recipe
2. We had not ran the recipes through the cost calculator

I bucked up and $47 later, we purchased everything a German Chocolate Cake and Black Forest Cake.

I spent some time finding a German Chocolate cake that sounded good ... but if you look at the recipe, you will see I failed to take the numerous steps into consideration.

When the kids arrived, we did a quick pre-brief - much to Megan's horror .... (I apparently sound like her math teacher).

This time, we broke into groups of two - but Sophia and I were to be "floaters" helping .... only Sophia quickly got bored because the initial steps were difficult to include her and I had to bounce back and forth, helping the two cakes.



Black Forest Cake - cupcake & 1/2 mini-cake versions



Megan and Mikalea tackled the Black Forest Cake.... one small cake and 12 cupcakes. Only error was they used heavy cream instead of buttermilk - but the cake still rose and held it's shape. The cupcakes were a little crumbly - but... kids managed to ice them, add cherries, whipped cream topping (which had to be remade 2x since the cherry juice curdled it the first time) and DEVOUR them (one shot has them all face-first into their cake)!

Landon and Kimia tackled the German Chocoate cake ... but it required a lot of help...  I had them first make the pecan/coconut frosting ... which requies cooking + toasting the coconut and pecans. We were smart to make that part first; just overlooked that we should also have made the chocolate icing at the same time (both have to cool to room temp).

German Chocolate Cake - cupcakes + mini-cake

We got the cake going ... but the process for separating eggs involved hands (not my first choice, but that's how the kids see it on TV and was how they wanted to do it). Before I realized what was up, both kids had hands full-on in the egg yolks, mixing them up! Gooey hands ... egg yolk dripping on the table... napkins + hand washing later, I talked them through how to add scrambled egg yolks to the batter, one yolk at a time... =)

Jump forward - we now have the cake ready, buttermilk added and "ah!" have to get egg whites to stiff peaks ... quick wash of dishes + beaters and we're off again... then to teach them how to "fold" the two together vs. stirring or beating ---

Clock was counting down and the German Chocolate cake was still baking. Kids were bored, as with one cake done, one set of kids were playing and the other set of kids were more interested in socializing than in finishing a labor-intensive project. The trampoline saved my sanity again! Meanwhile, I made the chocolate icing... which also needed to cool...a step I had neglected to notice in the preview. Fridge was my only hope of having it all assembled in time to go home with the kids. 

Despite best efforts, the German chocolate cake fell in the middle. Kinda worked well though - the coconut/pecan filling went in the "dip" of each cupcake and I was drizzling with mostly room-temperature chocolate icing just as the first parents arrived.

Each kid went home with 2 German Chocolate cupcakes and 1/2 a mini-cake. So happy to see those calories walk out the door.

Feedback from the kids -

• Most didn't care for the Black Forest cake - the mixture of the powdered sugar frosting with whipped cream, cherries and chocolate cake was too much all at once (note -they happily mostly devoured their two cupcakes, however)
• Didn't have time to taste test the German Chocolate Cake .... I did though, and YUM!

I learned a lot though - need simpler recipes that the kids can assemble and finished while it's baking. They lost interest when there were too many steps involved at this point. They want to taste at every step - which was fun to pass around slivers of unsweetened and bittersweet baking chocolate!

At the end of the day, I hope they are having fun and learning a little respect for process + ingredients when it comes to food.

Next month: Pie!

This month's recipes:

• German Chocolate Cake - www.davidlebovitz.com/2005/09/german-chocolat-1
• (note: we did not make the syrup for the layers):

• Black Forest Cake - (apologies, Megan found it & didn't record the URL):
• Cake

• 1-2/3 cups flour
• 2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1-1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1-1/2 cups white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1-1/2 cups buttermilk
• Frosting for layers
• 1/2 cup "kirschwasser" (cherry water)
• 1/2 cup butter
• 3-1/2 cups confectioner's sugar
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 tsp strong brewed coffee
• 2 (14-oz) cans pitted Bing cherries (drained)...reserve the juice for the "kirschwasser"
• Frosting for outside
• 2 cups heavy whipping cream
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp kirschwasser (I think this is optional... I think it broke the whipped cream)
• For decoration (we didn't use)
• 1 (1-oz) semisweet chocolate
• Directions:
• Preheat oven to 350-degrees
• Line the bottoms of 2 - 8" round pans with parchment paper circles
• Sift together flour, cocoa, baking soda and tsp salt - set aside
• Cream shortening and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Beat in flour mixture, alternating with buttermilk, until combined. Pour into 2 round 8" pans.
• Bake at 350-degrees for 35-40 min, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.
• Cool completely. Remove paper from the cakes. Cut each layer in half, horizontally, making 4 layers total
• Sprinkle layers with 1/2 cup kirschwasser (we didn't do this step)
• In a medium bowl, cream the butter until light and fluffy. Add confectioner's sugar, pinch of salt, and coffee; beat until smooth. If the consistency is too thich, add a couple tsp of kirschwasser or milk.
• Spread first layer of cake with 1/3 of the filling, top with 1/3 of the cherries. Repeat with remaining layers
• In a separate bowl, whip the cream to stiff peaks. Beat in 1/2 tsp vanilla and 1 tsp kirschwasser. Frost top and sides of cake
• Sprinkle with chocolate curls, made by using a potatoe peeler on semisweet baking chocolate (we skipped this step)

Kid's Baking Club #1 - Cookies!

Session 1 of baking club was Saturday, 9/1

So much fun - and a little chaos too. I learned a lot today and will get better next time!

Session 1 focused on cookies! With 5 kids, plus me, we broke up into groups of 2 and each tackled a different recipe.

We kicked off talking about kitchen safety, budget considerations (we have $10 / mo to work with and already overspent!) and kitchen cleanliness.

Each group happily tackled their recipes - though I had to keep popping over to answer questions, meaning I was distracted from the batch of chocolate chip cookies that Sophia and I were making ... and, watched in horror as the butter melted when I dumped in the still warm walnuts ... quickly put it in the fridge to hopefully re-congeal in time to bake before session ended.... and after 30 minutes, as I was about to dump it into a pan for bar cookies because it was still goopy, realized we never added the flour! Problem solved... it rapidly formed up into delicious cookies!

Downtime needs to be planned ... as well as tastings... the kids could NOT wait to taste their goodies. I make them painstakingly wait until one batch of each recipe was done, and then they got to devour one cookie from each. Such happy noises coming from the living room along with the disappointed groans that they couldn't eat them all!! Post cookie indulge, they spent ample time on the trampoline while I finished baking the cookies and distributing on take-home plates. 

I did have them come through and clean up their mess ... so this time, had a clean kitchen by 5pm.  

 

Session 1 Recipes:

• Chocolate Surprise (est. cost $3.59) - http://tinyurl.com/9769yqv
• Best Chocolate Chip Cookies (est. cost $9.25) - http://tinyurl.com/9n5xvd8
• Princess Cookies (est. cost $2.82) - http://tinyurl.com/9a2chzl

I probably learned as much (possibly more) than the kids.

 

Best!

Sherry

Kid's Baking Club - Setup Phase

In August, Megan expressed interest in forming a baking club. Wanting to support her budding passion for baking, I agreed to support her endeaver to regularly host a group of kids in our kitchen.

We just had our 2nd session - so will quickly add a few posts to catch up:

1. Pre-Planning

• We talked through the size of our kitchen and agreed that she could invite 3 friends (+ her sister, that's 5 kids we're dealing with each session - all but Sophia are in 6th grade)
• Budget - we talked about the cost of ingredients and thought through solutions to help pay for the club - they were:
• $ contribution - each participant pays a fixed amount each session
• Ingredient contribution - each participant would bring a key ingredient each session
• Recipe contribution - each participant would rotate bringing all ingredients
• We landed on $ contribution ... each participant brings $2.50
• Timing - we negotiated down from weekly to monthly (whew!) and from "all day" to 2-5pm

2. Pre-Invite

• Knowing how kids get excited and parents not always so much, I issued a "heads up" email to the parents of the kids about 2-days in advance of the invite. Wanted to give the families time to prep their child for the response most appropriate for their family. I additionally gave parents the option to review and vote on the budget contribution ideas

3. Invite

• Megan called each child and personally invited - outling the details of the club and the date of the first session

4. Recipe Planning

• For the first session, I did most of the recipe planning... those posts to come
• Ideally - will pre-plan the recipes and look at the cost of each. To facilitate, I put together a very simple Excel spreadsheet and worked with Megan to build out the equations and calculate the cost of most major ingredients - for example:
• Sugar - $3.99 for 4 lb
• Ingredients list indicated 1tsp as the serving size and 454 estimated servings in 4 lb
• We calculated $0.01 (rounded up) as the cost per tsp
• We then looked up the # tsp in common measurements and built a table of costs to get to the cost per cup
• The next tab of the spreadsheet has the recipe outlined and the cost per item, based on the measurement required

This was all very "boring" to Megan, but I think useful in helping her understand that just because we're making it at home doesn't mean it's "free."