by Utkrishta Mulmi with additions by Nitya Poudel
27 January 2017
www.spinybabbler.org . facebook.com/SB.Evolution
www.spinybabbler.org . facebook.com/SB.Evolution
We were planning on making cookies for Valentine’s Day and selling them under our finance and economy curriculum. It is really important that we have life skills and that includes the ability to earn money, Pallav sir said. I was very excited. At first we were told that we were going to make gingerbread cookies but then we realized we could be a lot more creative with what we were doing.
We looked at the cookie cutters that we had: we were looking for a heart shaped cookie cutter because it would be Valentine’s theme product we were making but unfortunately we did not have a heart-shaped cookie-cutter which was very surprising to me actually. But at least we found cookie cutters which if you put them in order could spell “I love you!” How wonderful. Pallav sir said, this would be a lot of work and that we would make different flavors for each alphabet and each of them would be of different color.
Right before the “I LOVE YOU,” we would place an angel we said as we had an angel shaped cookie cutter too! Oh, this would look pretty goooooood.
Then we looked at some videos to make fancy cookies. So that was the day before. On the day we were to make cookies, we first looked in the kitchen to see if we had everything we needed and of course we did not. So some of us had to go shopping to go and buy ingredients that we did not have: we did not have icing sugar, unsalted butter, red food coloring and a box to place the cookies in. Those of us who went shopping were Nitya, Abin, Pukar, Susmita, Pallav sir and Vidheha. Oh, it was raining and a cold day. How wonderful that we were making cookies and spending the day researching, shopping, discussing, cutting, and in from of the oven rather than doing the work that is so often what defines a school.
NITYA WRITES:
Pallav sir gave me Rs. 2000 and told me that I had to pay for the things we will buy. We went to the ground floor searching for stuff like icing sugar, red food color and butter. We saw many icing sugar packets on the shelf but some had become solid, some were very expensive and imported, we found a packet of icing sugar made in Nepal. We found food colors and essence. I found a small bottle with red color inside it and Pallav sir asked me to check carefully if it was essence or color. Actually upon closer inspection, I found that it was strawberry essence and not food color. We already had that at school! I found red color and we got that.
When we reached the place where butter was placed, we saw different types of butter. We were thinking of taking the butter made by Amul company which was very expensive. Then we saw cheaper butter and got that instead. I paid the bill and we moved on to another floor. We wanted to find boxes for cookies, a heart shaped cookie cutter and pepper dispenser. First we went to search for the boxes. We found a box which was ok for 8-9 cookies. There were boxes of bigger and smaller sizes. After choosing a sample box, we went in search of heart shaped cookie cutter but there were none to be found loose. There was packet of 6 cutters but that was Rs. 425 so we thought we would not get that. They told that both pepper dispenser and single heart shaped cookie cutter were finished. We were done and we returned back to school. Where everyone was waiting with much excitement.
UTU CONTINUES:
The rest of us who stayed at school looked at some more videos on how to make boxes for cookies, how to gift wrap and how to make different cookies and cakes.
We waited for about an hour for them to come back and once they did we cleared the table to make cookies. Sabita didi called us for lunch. After lunch and cleaning the table, that I was asked to bring big bowls full of flour and had a wooden spatula and also a smaller bowl. Kusma and Sabita maam cooked the dry flour over low heat for quite a while. The idea was that the cookies would be thick and only baked for 20 minutes at the max so we did not want the flour to be raw.
In the small bowl Pallav sir put the unsalted butter and with the spatula mashed it in and kept on mashing but it did not work so we took it to the microwave and heated it for a minute. When the butter was softened, Bhagwati maam and Sabita didi kneaded it into the well cooked flour in a bowl over and over again. We added 2 eggs initially. We did not add any water. We also added the icing sugar and salt in the mix.
Once the kneaded flour was ready, we split it into 5 big dollops. We took all of the food colourings and all the flavours and arranged it properly so we would have matching colour with matching flavours. Orange essence would be used for the orange coloured mix. For mango we used yellow with a little bit of orange colour, for pineapple essence we used yellow only, for strawberry flavour we used red in a way that we would have pink and for vanilla we used blue. Too late, we found out that we do not have white cookies. Ah well, next time.
We thought that we could get confused with which flavour is in which dough so we made pineapple no 1, strawberry no 2, orange was 3, mango was 4, and vanilla was 5. Abin would work on the pineapple, Vidheha and Kusma on strawberry, Susmita on orange, Nitya on mango and Pukar and I on vanilla mix. Then I was asked to get 5 small bowls. After I brought the bowls, Pallav sir cracked 5 eggs, removed the yolk, and put one in every bowl. He said we would use the whites to brush the cookies so they would become glossy.
After getting the yolk in the bowls we poured different essences that we were assigned and stirred them into the yolk. We took the different dollops of dough next for the different flavours and poured the well mixed egg yolk and essence into our dough. We remained very organized and did not forget our number or the essence that was in our portion of the dough. Bhawana maam, Bhagwati maam and Sabita maam kneaded the dough very well to assure that we would have a good taste. Then slowly, a little and more and more food color was added to bring out what we wanted. I can tell you, getting blue color right was very hard. But when we had the dough ready, everything looked so beautiful and edible. I could have eaten the sweet tasty mix then and there. After all, the flour had been cooked beforehand so it was eat ready.
The mixing and kneading when on for quite a while though and strangely enough, I did not feel bored even though I spilt Pallav sir’s big cup of tea on the floor and had to clean up a bit. Everyone gave me the LOOK! Oooooo.
I got to taste a small piece of the dough after all and it was quite good. I wish I could have had more! Since I had just split the tea, I did not want to excite anyone by asking for more.
We took out all the cookie cutters. We first took the angel shaped cookie cutter and used the mango flavoured dough for the angel. Pallav sir rolled out the dough and then cut an angel shape out and put them on a butter painted tray and made designs on the cookie. We all got to make the cookies. We finished the angels meaning all the mango flavoured dough was gone.
We used strawberry flavoured pink dough to make the O’s and some E’s. We used orange flavoured orange dough for I’s and the inside part of the O’s and the Y’s. We used vanilla flavoured blue dough to make the U’s and some L’s. After we made all the cookies we needed, Pallav sir made one more angel with the leftovers, but this one was a different coloured angel as it had blue vanilla, bright orange and yellow mango and pink strawberry flavours mixed into one angel shape. He called it the modern art angel and it looked very interesting. We then painted each of the cookies with an egg white coating. We took some pictures with the cookies and put the cookies in the oven to bake. We had to bake in three batches, that was a lot of cookies. The smell of hot cookies warmed the air. Yum Yum Yum.
We were all so very happy when the cookies came out of the oven. Pallav sir said we would have to wait for an hour before we took the cookies out of the tray but we did not have patience and we damaged three cookies taking them out of the tray too soon. The best part was that we got to eat the hot just baked cookies right away! This was wonderful. Vishal sir took photos of us. Our work was done we cleaned everything up. We would be eating the cookies for a few days yet!
No comments:
Post a Comment