2009/03/13

Field Journal Entry #3 – cupcakes

Success! We finally met when we were supposed to and without any delays at all. Therefore, we could start our third session in a positive mood.

This time, Hannah prepared a recipe for approximately two dozens (24) cupcakes. However, she surprised me announcing that we were going to prepare the double of that amount. Therefore, having seen an original recipe, I only had to double each of the measurements in order to achieve the final amount desired. I confirmed my belief that recopies serve to be guides which should be followed but not copied verbatim.

The second new aspect that was introduced in this lesson was consequences of baking on health. We barely used an egg the previous two sessions and now we were using 8 of them. Once I was done cracking them, Hannah ordered me to was my hands thoroughly. Since we were using far more raw eggs, chances of causing a disease called salmonella were higher. If I was careless and would have continued preparing the dough with dirty hands, I could have transferred some of the raw eggs on our utensils later used to prepare buttercream frosting. And the frosting was a part of our cupcakes which did not go through the heat process of baking; therefore it was a part which could have had salmonella. Frankly, I hope that all the dining staff on campus follows the same hygienic procedures.

Overall, everything went smoothly and we were baking as we have been doing it for ages. No major complications occurred. Well, a minor problem arose when we run out of milk and powder sugar supplies intended for frosting. While I was placing already finished dough into the baking form, Hannah went to buy milk. Unfortunately, she was not able to get the powdered sugar. However, it was not a big deal anyway because we still had enough of it to make a half amount of the frosting. And we barely used that too because cakes were pretty sweet without any frosting at all.

We baked one load of cupcakes which I took for my friends. Hannah kept the second half of the dough. I hope she managed to bake as delicious cupcakes as we achieved in the first load. They were light, fluffy, easy to bite and swallow, aromatic, soft and sweet. I distributed them among the whole campus – from Starr, through Battell, to Allen. For once again, I did not receive a single negative feedback.