Lesson Plan #7 Feb.18th-22nd

Lesson Plan #7 Feb.18th-22nd

Angel Food Strawberry Shortcake

Due to extended day next week on Thursday, Feb. 28th. Our Thursday class had their last cooking and baking lesson for the trimester.

I must say, this weeks recipe was ridiculously delish! Fresh Strawberries, Homemade Angel Food Cake and Freshly made whipped cream! Can you say YUMMO?!

We started our lesson by slicing strawberries using an egg slicer which makes our sliced strawberries uniform and is a kid friendly kitchen gadget ;) We added sugar to our fresh strawberries (reiterated that fresh fruit is delicious without adding anything to it). We taught the kids that when you add sugar to fresh fruit, it will extract moisture in the strawberries and turn the sugar into a syrup by using the juice in the berries (or the fresh fruit of your choice). This is a process called Macerate. In food preparation, maceration is the softening or the breaking up into pieces using a liquid. In the case of fresh fruit, particularly soft fruit such as strawberries and raspberries, they are often just sprinkled with sugar, (which is what we did) then left to sit and release their own juices which becomes a red liquid syrup. This process makes the food/fruit more flavorful.

Every child got to separate the yolk from the egg by using an egg separator. This was a fun process. We explained the importance of not getting any yolk into the egg whites. Why? Well...it matters a lot. When you are separating egg whites, it is for whipping them into a foam. This foam is a protein-based foam, relying on protein ends hooking onto each other. Even small traces of fat will prevent the foam from forming. Egg yolks contain high amounts of fat. Once an egg yolk breaks in your whites, you have to start the separation over because it can prevent your foam from forming. Also, don't use plastic bowls for whipping egg whites (their surface retains some fat molecules even after washing, giving you a less stable foam) and only whip with a clean washed whisk or mixer attachment (not one you have just used for something else, not even if you wiped it clean).

We explained to the kiddos to use a metal bowl when making homemade whipped cream. Cream whips best when it is cold. Keep your cream as cold as possible, and use a chilled bowl (refrigerate for at least 15 minutes; metal bowls get colder than glass). It helps to chill your whisk or beaters as well. Please keep in mind that warm metal will transfer its heat to the cream. If it's warm in your kitchen, you may want to keep the bowl in a larger bowl of ice-water during and after the whipping process. We placed ours in the fridge and used all of it. We taught and showed the kids the difference between medium peaks that formed with the egg whites and firm peaks that formed with the whipped cream.

The kids were taught the difference between regular all-purpose flour and cake flour. Cake flour is 27 times finer then all-purpose flour. They were introduced to a sifter and the purpose of sifting our cake flour, salt and cream of tartar together. Let me say, they all had fun sifting!

*Cook's Tip*
This recipe calls for you to place the sugar in a food processor for about two minutes until the granulated sugar turns into fine sugar. You can use a blender or they sell Castor sugar which is super fine. Also, you can use egg whites that are sold in cartons. Not Eggbeaters but egg whites. You would need 1 cup of egg whites to equal 12 egg whites that this recipe calls for.

Hope your kids enjoyed another great week of our cooking and baking elective.