Category: Learning Project

Hey Folks,

We have come to an end of an unforgettable journey. Bruce’s Baking Bash is closing up shop. But not before one final hurrah. In last blog post, I mentioned that I will attempt to make homemade hamburger buns, but I decided to change things up. As Father’s Day is approaching, I selfishly wanted to make myself some muffins to celebrate.

Here is a link to the recipe I am following.

I have learned from my mistakes while making cookies and have taken the butter and eggs out prior to baking so they are room temperature and easy to mix

Another lesson learned was to make sure I have all the ingredients prior to starting. I got lucky in my cookie adventure, but was not going to expect that to happen again. Turns out I had everything this time!

Next is time to get the dry ingredients in one bowl and wet ingredients in another.

Mix mix mix!

Apparently, when combing the wet and dry ingredients for muffins, the key is to NOT over mix. Below is probably even a touch over mixed from what I found out. So now they go into the muffin pan and into the oven. Fingers crossed.

Anxiously waiting…

Success! Now they need to cool for ~ 5 minute before I add the glaze.

The glaze was super quick and simple to make. Not to mention delicious! It wasn’t quite on the same level as the cookie dough a couple weeks ago but it was good!

This recipe makes a dozen and if you are wondering why the below picture only has 11…well I would love to say I taste tested one,but my daughters decided to split one before I could snap a picture.

 

Before I sign off on my last Baking Bash, I want to give you and overview of everything I learned about baking and the process of learning a new skill online.

I started off my diving into cupcakes. In doing that I not only attempted baking for the first time, but also searched for a recipe online for the first time. While I did not use an online recipe for this part, this definitely gave me a head start from my future projects (including next weeks). I found myself coming back to similar sites each time I searched. For example, the familiar name of ‘Betty Crocker’ appeared several times in searching for cupcake recipes, which lead me to try it for cookies. It is the experience of searching online for a recipe and following only the online sources that I found interesting. Allow me to explain. My wife is a small town farm girl and her parents still live out on the farm. With this, my wife and my mother in law both have an abundance of knowledge and experience in baking. As well, they also each have large recipe books. While recipe books may seem obsolete or out dated to some, to my wife and her mother, they are timeless. So when I said I was going to try baking cupcakes for this class, I was hit with 100 different recipes before I could finish getting the words out. It was here that things became difficult. I really had trouble with staying committed to learning online when I had two seasoned veterans peering over my shoulders. I would also venture to guess it was equally as hard, if not harder for them to sit and watch me screw up while they were biting their tongues. And that was just for cupcakes. At this point I had more posts I knew I needed to complete on my own.

For the cookies, I knew I had to make a change, so I waited for my wife to be out of the house and strictly followed the online protocol. Perhaps it was the lack of pressure from not having an audience this time, or the experience I gained from completing the cupcakes; but I found the entire process, start to finish, easier this time around. Everything from searching for the recipe online to double checking the recommended baking time online was simpler. I found baking was getting easier and using online sources was getting easier too.

When it came to the muffins, I again, waited for my wife to be out of the house to give it a go. And again, the third time was easier than the first two, in terms of using technology to help me learn a skill and my actually baking skills.

In summary, this was a very valuable project for me. I found that I was able to not only learn a pretty basic and awesome life skill, but was able to learn in through a new medium. I would argue that the majority of baking recipes and secrets are passed down from generation to generation (think of grandma’s homemade bread or baba’s perogies) through word of mouth not email. However, I was able to find quality recipes, advice and instructions in the online world. I will admit that I started very basic with my baking creations, and thus made it harder for me to screw up. But give me a break, I needed to start somewhere. I will undoubtedly continue to advance my baking skills in the future and maybe one day I will be able to bake something for my students.

Until then…

 

Cheers,

BDA

 

 

 

 

Hey Blog Family,

I have decided to try something different for this post. Instead of typing out the lessons I have learned (most the hard way) from my baking adventures, I decided to make a video and share it with you that way. I decided to use this week as a week to reflect and learn from my mistakes (documented below) before I attempt my newest challenge…home made hamburger buns. Check back in next week for updates on!

Enjoy!

Cheers,

BDA

Hey Blog Fam,

In this edition of my learning project I decided to switch gears. In my previous learning project post I referenced baking my own birthday cake, but that’s still a few weeks away and I need to squeeze some blog posts in before then. I thought of a few different things to try and bake, then my wife mentioned that I should try and make cookies for our oldest daughters soccer team. Her exact wording was “I’m confident you can’t screw cookies up”.  Believe it or not, she really is a nice lady!

I decided to try oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for two reasons. 1) We just recently bought a Costco sized bag of oatmeal, so we need to find uses for it. 2)Kids love chocolate chip cookies. Fool proof logic, I know.

After a quick google search, I ended up at this website and decided I would give it a shot.

 

Step 1. Calm Before The Storm. Obviously, I started by gathering all the materials.

Step 2. Let The Mixing Begin. I don’t want to brag here, but I barely made any mess this time. Last baking post I was dropping eggs and spilling chocolate. This time, save for a minor baking soda spill, that counter was spick and span!

Step 3. Rolling. This was my favourite part of the entire project for one MAJOR reason. COOKIE DOUGH. My goodness, I did not realize how good that stuff really is. I’m sure I ate about 4 cookies worth of cookie dough before I even rolled a single cookie. Sorry for that rant, but it was necessary. Back to the baking. I decided that I would try making the cookies the size that I wanted, instead of using the ‘scooper thingy’…I’m not sure what it is called. So I made the cookie dough balls bigger than usual, because, who doesn’t love big cookies?

Step 4. The Waiting Game. Turns out the 10-12 mins that the recipe called for was for cookies that are smaller than mine. Likely the size of that ‘scooper thingy’. Good thing my wife was not there to say “I told you so”. After 12 mins I took the cookies out to take a look and they were clearly not ready. Maybe the picture below doesn’t do that justice, but trust me they were still gooey.

So I gave them another 5 minutes…Still gooey. Another 3 minutes…Less gooey, but not quite sturdy enough yet. It was here I realized that I may be burning the bottom of the cookies. So I grabbed the spatula and decided to slide it underneath each cookie to check the bottom. Big. Mistake.

This poor guy was not ready to be moved and fell apart as soon as I picked it up. I guess the good news was this was the only disaster. Phew. 2 more minutes and they should be done.

Step 5. SUCCESS. The cookies are done and the house is still upright! As for the poor guy at the bottom right, I have a feeling he won’t make it to the next soccer game. The rest will and the jury will decide then.

Thank you for making it through with me. I enjoyed this stage of the learning project and am looking forward to the next baking bash. The big lesson I learned from this adventure is: COOKIE DOUGH > EVERYTHING. I’m not sure what the next project will be, but my wife and I did discuss a carrot cake for my birthday. We will see.

 

Cheers,

BDA

Hello everyone!

Welcome back. It is finally time. My daughters Dinosaur Pull Apart Cake has come to fruition! While Regina celebrates ‘Scotty’ the Dinosaur at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum; what it should be celebrating is the successful (up for debate) creation of a Dinosaur Pull Apart Cupcake Cake!

In my first post on my learning project, I referenced a YouTube video which showed an ‘easy’ way to ice the cupcake. While I was about to begin, I realized that I should look into this a little deeper. I wanted to find at least one more website or video that gave some insight on how to decorate this bad boy. I ended up at this site which I found easy to read and more importantly offered simple steps.

So it was time to finally go for it. I started by making the icing and piping it onto the dinosaur shape. Little did I know that you have to secure the cupcakes on the cake pan in order to keep the shape. Needless to say I learned that the hard way. At this point I had already piped the perimeter of the dinosaur so I had to switch gears. Apparently you can ‘dot’ the cupcakes (or at least that’s what my wife said), so I gave that a try.

Below is the outline of the icing on the left and the ‘dotted’ dino on the right.

After the dinosaur was iced up it was time to add the spikes. I followed the recipe from the above website with the melted chocolate chips. I used white chocolate and then added food colouring at my oldest daughters request. I then did my best to add a similar decoration to the spikes…it wasn’t great, but it worked. The eye piece was a single piece found at bulk barn.

FINALLY! All the decorations and icing are complete. I’m looking forward to sharing the ‘masterpiece’ with my family for my daughter birthday

As I continue Bruce’s Baking Bash, I will look into making my own birthday cake (my wife’s idea) as my birthday is right after the end of the semester. I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I will eating this!

 

Cheers,

BDA

Hey Gang,

I’m off to the races! I officially have begun to make the cake I referenced last week. I intend to follow the steps below:

1. Make cupcakes
2. Make icing
3. Place cupcakes on cardboard to hold the shape
4. Smother in icing
5. Devour cake on my youngest daughters birthday.

Step one is complete and somehow, went off without a hitch. I searched online for very basic chocolate cupcake recipes and as you can imagine there were thousands that appear. Needles to say this was overwhelming. Luckily for me my wife was close by and pointed out that she knew this would happen and bought the pre-made cake mix so I had less to screw up. I will reluctantly admit that she was very correct.

After dropping an egg

 

and spilling the milk the mix was finally complete. Now the hard part: pouring the mix in the cupcake pan. Oh boy was this a mess! Below was only part of the mess. My oldest daughter was busy cleaning (licking) up the rest of the chocolate.

 

The only thing left was to put those bad boys in the oven and hope for the best. Let me tell you, that was the longest 12 minutes of my life. I felt like this…

 

However, much to my surprise (and my wife’s) I nailed them!

Next time I post about this it will be the final project! We will get to see how the icing, shaping and devouring go! The last image is a picture of how we will go about shaping the dinosaur cake. Sorry about the orientation…I’m still working on this blogging thing.

 

Cheers,

 

BDA

Welcome back everyone. As promised, this post will dive into my learning project…Baking. I have no problems cooking breakfast, lunch or dinner (although, I’m sure my wife would disagree) but dipping into cakes, cupcakes and other desserts is something I have never done nor even considered until now. My youngest daughter will turn 2 in two weeks and has requested a dinosaur cake. Challenge accepted. I have decided to go with the pull apart cupcake cake style. My thinking here is that, I can hide the poor quality cupcakes that I am bound to make in heaps of icing and mounds of candies placed on the cake. As well, I think I am bound to get at least a couple of the cupcakes correct, while a big cake is a do or die prospect that I’m not ready for yet.

I found this video on YouTube that gives a nice short demonstration on how to ice the dinosaur.

 

As of now, this is what I will aim for. Fingers crossed.

I will continue to update you on the process and try to provide pictures next time.

 

Cheers,

BDA