Our First Practical

Last Friday was our first practical in Baking 1. We did pretty good, we came out with a high B. But if I'm being honest, I really don't like anything less than an A. I made a lot of A's throughout school-not bragging just stating a fact-and I liked making those A's. It's been a long time since I was last in school, so I'm okay with that B for now. But I had better start seeing A's again soon. (Do you hear that, Self?)

We didn't know what we would be making for our practical until Friday, we just knew it would be three formulas we had already done. Our first practical consisted of biscuits, sour cream muffins and chocolate chip cookies. (Yay! No chance of ending up with nut banana bread!)

We started with the biscuits. Everything went smoothly. Until we pulled them out of the oven. They weren't as pretty as the biscuits we made a couple weeks ago. Bummer. When Chef evaluated them, he said their color was off and they were a little dry, but they tasted pretty good otherwise. The cause: overmixing.

Next we made the muffins. This time we made the steusel by hand and that made all the difference! Chef even noticed while walking by and said we had "perfect streusel." Yay! I think I'm making it a rule of thumb from now on to only cut in butter (one of the steps of making streusel and many other things) by hand; a mixer just doesn't do it right. Our muffins turned out better than the biscuits, but they were still overmixed which resulted in some tunneling and a little toughness (not tough, but not as soft as a muffin should be).

Last we made chocolate chip cookies. They looked great, except for a little wrinkling on the outer edges due to...again, overmixing. And they were a little tough...due to overmixing. (I've learned that one little misstep can affect many things in the end!) But they tasted really good!

I've decided that preventing overmixing is one of those things that I will really learn from experience. I will have to make countless batches of biscuits and cookies that have been overmixed before I will know exactly when a dough has been mixed just enough. Practice makes perfect! So, who wants tough cookies?