Day 5, The End of Week One!

Tonight we continued our exploration of ingredients and managed to get through the sweeteners!  We learned about different sugars and liquid sweeteners, how to make simple syrup and inverted sugar (the sugar, sucrose, is broken down into two parts, dextrose and levulose which is better for certain kinds of baking).

After lecture it was time to do our first official baking!  Remember the ingredients we scaled yesterday?

Well, here are the shortbread cookies I made!  I'm afraid I overcooked the first batch (oops!) so here's the good batch of them.  They are quite tasty!

This is what the biscotti looks like before it's baked.

And after it's baked the first time.  From there it gets sliced diagonally and baked again to dry it out (this seems to take FOREVER!)

And here is the finished product. Isn't it pretty?!  It came out really well and I'm very happy with it!  

For me, I think I might add a bit more sugar and extracts, but I like strong flavors and I don't dip mine in coffee or anything....maybe I will dip a couple of pieces in chocolate and see how they come out.  :-)

Well, we made it through the first week!  Next week we start on some serious baking and it's all very exciting!!

And tonight in the sock corner we have....

Beer mugs!!

Lol, Adam's socks.