Day 6

Today was the first day of the second week of school!  We made brownies as our group project and then coconut macaroons and oatmeal raisin cookies on our own.  There is a lot about cookie making that I wasn't aware of and it's been quite informative.  For example,  unlike for cake batter, you want to barely mix your ingredients, especially the butter and sugar, to avoid incorporating air.  If there is too much air, the cookies become dry and tough when they're baked or the dough spreads too much in the oven.  It's CRAZY!

As a group we got our ingredients scaled out for our brownies and melted the chocolate and butter on the bain marie (essentially a double boiler but with a pot of boiling water and a bowl on top).

Mmm, Chocolate!

Then I mixed the eggs and the sugar (not too much!)

Jessica tempered in the chocolate (poured it slowly while mixing so as not to cook the eggs) while I held the bowl.

Swirly goodness!

In go the dry ingredients and our walnuts....almost done!

Hey look, a pan of brownie batter!  We were so busy after this that I didn't have a chance to take a picture of the finished product but we'll get graded on it tomorrow and I'll let you know how they turned out.

The coconut macaroon recipe is a lot different than the one I used at Christmas...I must admit, these are so much better!  This is the batter after it's cooked but before it's baked....

Ooooo, Macaroons!!  They were so good!

My oatmeal raisin cookies were good but I think the dough was too warm when I baked them because they spread more than they should have.  We will see what Chef Wild says tomorrow.

I'm excited about tomorrow! We're moving into quickbreads so we're making Scones!  We get to choose our internal garnish...I'm thinking cranberry...mmmmm.

Today, Adam's socks were especially awesome, featuring Le Chat Noir! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Chat_Noir)

I love these socks!!