Day 6 : Cupcakes, pizza dough, and competition

 January 11, 2022



                                                            Art of Cooking: Day 6                                        

                                            Sweet, Sweet, Cooking



                    

Ahhh, cupcakes. The epitome of desserts.(debatable) The airyness of the frosting mixed

with the softness of the cooked batter, and of course we can’t forget the intoxicatingly sweet

smell makes a perfect dessert that can be eaten any day of the week! (Or everyday if you enjoy

them that much.) Today in our Art of Cooking class, Chef Jessica taught us how to make this

simple, yet delicious dessert. Yes, we did have our ups and downs

throughout this process, but in the end we made cupcakes….or something close to that Either way, most of them turned out pretty good!                 

To begin making our cupcakes, we started by preparing our frosting for our cupcakes!

Sara and Talulah making their cream cheese frosting!

We made our frosting using the same method when tempering eggs!

We whisked our egg whites in a bowl until they formed peaks and

because we added melted sugar in this mixture, we had to slowly

pour in the sugar to be careful we don't cook our egg whites. This

method contributed to the added airiness to our frosting. This is

Chef Jessica’s personal buttercream frosting recipe and we were

truly honored to be able to use it!


Emory, Gia, and Isa making their
vanilla buttercream frosting.


           The advanced group made two different frostings.
        One cream cheese frosting which complimented the red
           velvet cupcakes perfectly and one regular vanilla
    buttercream frosting to decorate both the chocolate
    and vanilla cupcakes.





        
        Next we made our delicious cupcake batter.
Everyone in the kitchen collected their ingredients
to start making their batter. We measured our
ingredients precisely (or as best as we could)
        to achieve the best cupcake possible. Sure, we
did make some mistakes regarding measurements
but it all worked out in the end. Some of us used
two different types of flour. All purpose flour and
cake flour. Ideally, you should definitely use cake flour.     
    Cake flour is low in gluten, and produces a much lighter and fluffier texture.
All purpose flour would also work, but it does lack he fluffy texture you would get from
a cupcake made from cake flour.

Imaar filling his cupcake tray
with chocolate batter



After we baked our cupcakes, it was time for our long awaited ….



COOKING COMPETITION!! (yay) Today we saw beautifully plated food. Sadly,

I didn’t get to taste them but that’s beside the point. Everybody’s dishes were

absolutely STUNNING. The advanced group prepared a homemade dish and

made sure to make their dish look as good as possible for the judges.



Gia's amazing rice dish!


Ira's Fried Shrimp! Great job Ira!

Looking good Gia!!!

After the competition ended, (1st place: Alex Maciel, 2nd place: Sara Avalos, 
3rd place: Gloria Morales) we decorated our cooled cupcakes!!! This did
take a bit of time but they all came out FABULOUS! Here are a
couple of pictures. 













Emory's beautifullll cupcake!! 
Amazing job Emory!!!!

Alex Maciel really enjoys kneeding                                                                                                                                                  
Alex really enjoys kneading his dough!
Ira with his chocolate caramel cupcake!
Looking cool!



Lastly we prepared our pizza dough for our pizza lesson!
All we kneaded to do was combine salt, flour, active yeast, water, and olive oil
to make our dough. Afterwards, you knead it for about 6-10 minutes to get a nice
bouncy dough. Make sure to wrap it in a plastic wrap so it can absorb moisture!!!














Talulah and Sara kneading their dough!!



Overall, today was a busy day, but it was 100 percent worth it! 
I mean look at these results....




Absolutely STUNNING am I right? Anyways, this is the end of the blog. I hope 
you enjoyed reading this!! Who knows, maybe you did learn a thing or two 
about cupcakes.

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