5/13/2019 0 Comments Link to my other website!Throughout this project, I have also been updating another website. This website included blogs and pictures just like this one, but it also includes links to the websites and recipes that I used during this project. If you are interested in checking out more pictures and recipes, click the link below!
0 Comments
5/8/2019 3 Comments Week 12 : 5/5/19 - 5/11/19It's my last week of Genius Hour! This project has really opened me up to new desserts that I never would have tried otherwise. For my last week, I decided to make a very simple dessert that I know very well instead of a complicated dessert that could very easily go very wrong. Chocolate chip cookies.
I didn't want to simply make bake n' breaks though. These chocolate chip cookies had to be delicious and overall just the best. So, I did some research and found what I thought looked like the best chocolate chip cookie recipe. One really good thing about this project has been the constant availability of supplies. I had to buy most of the ingredients the first week, but since then, I haven't had to buy much. I have had most of the ingredients already at home. We pretty much have an entire shelf in our pantry dedicated to my baking supplies. My dad is overwhelmed by how many chocolate chips we have. :) This week, I didn't have to buy ANYTHING! I kept to my normal schedule and made my dessert on Tuesday afternoon. Because cookies are fairly straightforward, it did not take long to mix the ingredients together. I mixed the dry and wet ingredients together separately, then combined them once they were properly combined. Then I added the chocolate chips, scooped them into little balls, and stuck them in the oven for 7-8 minutes. One thing I was actually nervous about with this recipe was overcooking the cookies. The person who made the recipe said they would look doughy when they came out but that you were just supposed to take them out and let them harden because that was what made them so good. I was kind of nervous about this because I didn't want to over bake the cookies, but I also didn't want to under cook them either. However, once the edges started turning a little brown, I took them out and they cooled to just the right texture. This recipe made a lot more cookies than I imagined. Once my second batch was done, I had about 55-60 cookies. I sent a big bag of them home with my friend, and distributed the others around school. The cookies were very popular with my peers, because who doesn't like a homemade chocolate chip cookie?! My appearance ratings were the highest they have ever been, and one of my friends actually claimed the cookies tasted like they were "crafted by angels" which was honestly probably a little extreme. I have had a lot of fun with this project, and I have learned a lot about the way I manage time. I will most likely keep making desserts as I have discovered that I truly have a ton of fun making them and sharing them with others. I had some minor setbacks and some of my desserts definitely failed, but overall I would say this project was successful. 5/1/2019 0 Comments Week 11 : 4/28/19 - 5/4/19This week I let my mom help me choose a dessert again. She chose a dessert from a different website that I have never tried before, so I was a little hesitant to try it. It also used Cool Whip which I do not like very much, so this was also something that made me hesitant to make this dessert. The dessert she chose was another peanut butter and chocolate dessert. We bought the ingredients, like usual, on Sunday. However, I was unable to make my dessert on Tuesday due to NHS inductions. Instead, I had to make my dessert on Wednesday. I was able to do this because we did not have school which helped me a lot. The easiest part of this dessert to make was the crust. I had to crush up some Nutter Butters, add melted butter, and bake it. This took about 15 minutes, so I made the other layers of the dessert while it was baking. The chocolate layer of this dessert was also very easy to make. I took chocolate pudding mix and added milk, then put it in the fridge to cool. The hardest layer to make was the peanut butter whipped cream layer. The mixture stuck to the beaters which made it difficult to get it mixed really well. Once the crust was done, I took the chocolate layer out of the fridge and spread it on top of the crust. Then, I tried to spread the peanut butter whipped cream layer. This was quite difficult to do because there wasn't quite enough of it to fully cover the dessert. This layer did not appear the way I wanted it to, but I was able to cover most of it. Once the peanut butter layer was down, I had to use the rest of the Cool Whip to cover the dessert. Doing this helped me cover up the awkward peanut butter layer that did not look very well. At first, the Cool Whip was not spreading very well, and I was worried that it wasn't going to look good either. However, once it melted a little bit, it spread very nicely and I was able to easily cover the entire dessert. After putting the dessert together, I sprinkled some leftover crushed nutter butters, chocolate chips, and peanut butter chips on top. Then, I put the dessert in the fridge to cool and become harder. It ended up looking pretty good, but no one has tasted it yet so it will be interesting to see what it tastes like. Once someone tastes the dessert, I will add a comment to tell what they thought of it. Overall, this dessert was fairly simple to make. My only complication was spreading the layers over the crust, but once that was done it was very easy to finish off. Cleaning up was also difficult due to the amount of crumbs produced and the amount of peanut butter that was on just about everything. Edit : My parents are OBSESSED! My mom told me she was very glad this dessert couldn't be brought to school because she doesn't want to share! 4/24/2019 1 Comment Week 10 : 4/21/19 - 4/27/19I changed my typical routine for my dessert this week. Because this weekend was Easter, my parents suggested making my dessert to take to our family reunion. I decided I wanted to make something unique that was related to Easter so it would be different from what I have made in the past.
The recipe I decided on was Cookie Dough Easter Eggs. This recipe really appealed to me because I love cookie dough and they seemed to really similar to Reece's Eggs which are one of my favorite desserts. The recipe seemed like it would be challenging to do, but I thought I could do it. My mom bought the ingredients on Saturday night, and I began to make the dessert when I got home. The first problem I ran into with this dessert was getting the eggs to stay in a good shape. The dough was very gritty and fell apart easily due to the amount of chocolate chips in it. My first few eggs stuck together pretty well, but the more I tried to make the more they fell apart. I eventually got all the dough in Easter egg shapes, and I stuck them in the fridge thinking it would harden them and they would stick together better. I was wrong. When it was time to take the eggs out of the fridge, I put white chocolate chips into four bowls and melted them one at a time to create the icing to cover the eggs. Once the chocolate was melted, I put food coloring in it to make it Easter colors. The first color I made was a light green, but the chocolate wasn't as runny as it was supposed to be. I tried to dip an egg in the chocolate, and the whole thing fell apart. I knew I wouldn't be able to dip any of the others in it because it was already getting harder, and the icing was now a brownish color instead of green because it was full of chocolate chips. My dad and I decided to go to the store and get a different type of white chocolate that we thought would melt better than white chocolate chips. We got a few different kinds just in case and headed home. The baker's chocolate that we bought ended up melting a lot better and was easier to cover the eggs with. I still had trouble with the eggs sticking together though. In the end, this recipe was not very successful in the appearance category. We ended up taking doughnuts to the Easter gathering, and we just kept the eggs at home for us to eat. Some of them were the color of baby poop, and others were in lots of little pieces, so we didn't think we could serve them to the rest of our family. If I could do this recipe again, I would definitely freeze the eggs first to harden them before dipping the chocolate, and I would get the right chocolate the first time. 4/20/2019 1 Comment Week 9 : 4/14/19 - 4/20/19This week was one of the only desserts I have made that did not involve chocolate. I love chocolate very much, so it was challenging picking out a recipe that did not have it in it. So, I chose a recipe that included something else I love very much. Snickerdoodles. I didn't want to make another cookie recipe, so I found a recipe for snickerdoodle blondies. I purchased my ingredients on Sunday as usual, but chose to make my dessert on Thursday instead of Tuesday when I usually do it. I wasn't at school for most of the day on Wednesday because I was going to get my license, so I didn't need to have my dessert ready by then. On Thursday, I put out all of my ingredients and began to make the blondies. The recipe was fairly simple to make, but the dessert was thicker than I expected. This made it challenging for it to bake all the way through. I didn't want to burn the top, so my mom recommended covering the dessert with aluminum foil to keep the inside cooking without burning the top. This worked well for the most part. I still had to put the middle back in for a little while longer after taking out the outsides, but once it cooked a little while longer, it was perfect. This dessert tasted very good, and I was very pleased with how it turned out. If I were to make this dessert again, I would try a larger pan like I wanted to do with the one of my previous desserts. This would probably keep the dessert from becoming too thick, and it might not take as long to bake. Because I didn't take this dessert to school, I was unable to have my classmates try it. However, I was still able to have my family try it and they really enjoyed it. Other than the fact that this dessert was a little thicker than I would have liked, I thought it was a very successful dessert and would love to try it again. 4/10/2019 0 Comments week 8 : 4/7/19 - 4/13/19This week's dessert came from a request by my little brother. I was unaware that I was making this dessert until after my mom had already purchased the ingredients. I happened to mention in the car that I needed to decide which dessert to make, and she mentioned that she had already bought the ingredients for me to make red velvet cookies per my brother's request. I had never made a dessert using red velvet, so I was excited to try and see if it was more challenging that other desserts.
Yesterday, I laid out all my ingredients for the dessert. I started by making the cream cheese filling for the cookies. This had to be refrigerated for 30 minutes until it was okay to be used, so I wanted to make that first and fix the cookie dough while it was chilling. Once I had made the filling and put it in the fridge, I started the red velvet cookie dough. I had to wash the mixers in between because both sets required the use of them which wasn't preferable, but it ended up not taking a lot of time to do. I mixed together all the ingredients for the cookie dough and was surprised to see that red velvet is basically a chocolate cookie with red food coloring added to it. Some recipes add extra ingredients to make it "true" red velvet, but this recipe did not require that. Once the cookie dough was ready, I removed the filling from the fridge and began to ball up the cookies. This was an interesting experience because I would get the dough all over my fingers and would have to form the cookie without messing up the outside. One of the big problems I ran into with this recipe was the size of the cookies. I did not have much time to make them because I had to leave the house for Young Life, so some of the cookies had to be bigger than others. I also did not have room to make more than two pans of cookies, so that required a little modification. I also had trouble with keeping my area clean. There were lots of dry ingredients that had to mixed together and they were challenging to keep contained. The cocoa powder was especially messy because it poofed anytime you tried to empty it out of the cup. I also had to be very careful with the food coloring because it got all over my hands and I wanted to prevent it from going anywhere else. Overall, I really liked this dessert and I think others liked it as well. There weren't as many cookies this week as there normally are so not as many people could try them, but the reviews I did it were descriptive and gave me good feedback. I would love to make this dessert in the future and try to make more cookies if I have more time. 4/4/2019 0 Comments Week 6 and 7: 3/31/19 - 4/6/19Last week was our Spring Break at school. I was unable to update last week because I was very busy and was constantly doing things. I was hardly ever home and didn't have a chance to make a dessert, so this week I made two. I originally had only planned to do one, but the recipe I was using ended up allowing me to make two. I was originally only going to make a peanut butter cookie stuffed brownie. I bought all of my ingredients on Sunday as usual and made my dessert on Tuesday. I started by making the brownies which was very simple because I just had to follow the instructions on the box. Then, I made the peanut butter cookie dough. This was fairly simple as well, but I ran into a small problem with mixing the dough because of how thick it was. It constantly got stuck on the beaters and I would have to stop to clean them off. When I scooped the cookie dough into the brownies, I realized I was going to have a lot of extra cookie dough. I decided that instead of throwing it out, I would just experiment and make another dessert to make up for last week. I put my brookie in the oven and did other homework while it baked. The brookie had a big complication when it was baking. The cookie dough cooked very quickly and was ready to take out but the brownie was not baking. I had the brookie in the oven for about 45 minutes and eventually had to take it out and throw away most of it because the brownie just wouldn't cook. I was able to spare most of the outside but I couldn't save the middle. I was really disappointed by this because it seemed like a very good dessert. However, I was able to make some peanut butter cookies with the extra dough. I put some Reece's pieces in the peanut butter dough before baking it so it would be a little more interesting than simple peanut butter cookies. They baked for about 15 minutes and came out perfectly. I was able to have some people try each dessert so I got feedback on each one. If I was to make this dessert again, I would try to make the brookie in a larger pan. This would prevent it from becoming too thick and I would probably have more success with baking it all the way through. Overall, the brookie was a disappointment, but the cookies turned out very well. 3/20/2019 0 Comments Week 5 : 3/17/19 - 3/23/19This week, I chose to make a dessert that my mom chose because her birthday was Tuesday. She has always loved Reese's (almost as much as me), so I wanted to make a dessert that incorporated those. When I found Reese's Cake Mix Cookies, I knew I had to try them for her. She was super excited to try them and I was super excited to attempt to make a cookie with cake mix.
This recipe was fairly different from other cookie recipes I have used before because I had to use cake mix instead of cookie dough. I didn't even have to follow the recipe on the back of the cake box which made me a little nervous. The dough that I made was thicker than most cake mix but thinner that most cookie dough. Once I had made the dough, I mixed in the mini Reese's cups and chilled the mixture for about an hour. When it was chilled, I scooped it onto a pan and stuck it in the oven. One problem I ran into was the time. I had a challenging time finding the perfect time to cook my cookies. I did not want to have a repeat of last week's issue with burning the cookie. These cookies actually took longer to bake than the recipe said they would, so I was constantly checking on the cookies to make sure they were in there for a good amount of time. My second batch was easier to make because I had a better idea of how long they would take and I didn't have to check on them as often. Overall, everyone really liked this dessert. The tastes were simple but complemented each other nicely. The mixture of sweet and salty is typically a favorite of most people and the only criticism I had was the Reese's taste overpowered the taste of the cookie. However, everyone thought the appearance of my dessert had improved which was encouraging to see. 3/13/2019 1 Comment Week 4 : 3/10/19 - 3/16/19For this week of Genius Hour, I chose to make a cookiedilla. A cookiedilla is basically a quesadilla with cookies and chocolate instead of tortillas and cheese. When I first picked this dessert, I knew it would be challenging to make, but it turned out to be even harder than I expected it to be. Overall, the dessert tasted well in the end but the appearance was still struggling. The first problem I ran into with this dessert was when I accidentally burned my first cookie circles. I put them in the oven for the time they were supposed to bake for but because I was using a random type of cookie dough, they burned to the point where I didn't want to use them. Thankfully, I had not used the other half of the cookie dough and was able to try again. The second time, the cookie circles came out perfectly. Once I had spread the marshmallow fluff and the chocolate sauce, I baked the dessert for another three minutes and then drizzled chocolate sauce on the dessert. This was another problem that I ran into with my cookiedilla. This was a challenge because the chocolate hardened a little quicker than I expected it would which made it harder to drizzle and overall affected the appearance of my dessert. The main thing people commented on with this dessert was the appearance. The taste aspect was also altered because some people ate it when it was warm and some were not able to. I personally believed it was better when it was warm, but those who tried it at room temperature said it was good then as well. I will have to work harder at improving the appearance of my desserts because at the current moment I am not doing too well at improving in that area. I will need to make sure I am following all of the directions 100% and that I'm working really hard to not mess up the appearance. 3/6/2019 0 Comments Week 3 : 3/3/19 - 3/9/19For week 2 of Genius Hour I chose to make oreo truffles. I have never been a huge fan of oreos, but everyone I know really likes them so I thought this would be a popular dessert. My schedule was thrown off a little because of a dance convention I went to this weekend which prohibited me from getting my ingredients and recipe ready on Sunday. However, I was still able to get them on Monday which allowed to me to make my dessert on Tuesday which is what I wanted to do.
This dessert took less time to prepare for than the fudge, but the overall time for the dessert was longer. I had to make the truffles first which had to freeze for about 30 minutes before I could dip them into the melted while chocolate. My truffles ended up freezing for about an hour and a half because I did not manage my time well and wasn't able to get them out right away. This problem was easily fixed though by placing the truffles in the fridge to harden the chocolate instead of the freezer. I also did not make enough white chocolate, so I had to dip the remaining truffles in milk chocolate instead of drizzling it on top of the regular truffles. When I let people try the truffles today they were a huge hit. Some people told me they liked them better than the fudge, but most people still said there was room for improvement with the appearance. This was a critique I was expecting because the chocolate was a little hard to manage when I dipped the truffles in it. Hopefully I can make this dessert again and improve on that skill. |
AuthorHi! My name is Sadie Essic and I love to bake! Go to my About page to read more about me and my project! |
Photo used under Creative Commons from verchmarco