Baking at School: Part 2

Special thanks to Choices Market on Cambie for donating fresh, quality ingredients!

The mysterious chef known as Dude made a Sweet Coconut Pumpkin Soup. I cut up a raw sugar pumpkin, peeled it and sliced it into bite sized pieces. This is a challenging bit of prep that I recommend you leave for an adult. We had about two cups of pumpkin and put it in about 3 cups of boiling water. Once the pumpkin is soft, add 1 cup tapioca strings, 2 cups of coconut milk, and a jar or two of coconut jelly squares. Soup for dessert? Yes! I have developed a real taste for the sweet "soups" of India with a strong cup of authentic masala chai.

Now for more muffins! Extremely Inconvenient Banana and Chef Bobula made Browned Butter Pumpkin Muffins, the first of three different pumpkin muffin recipes the students baked. The secret to this recipe is melting and then browning the butter on the stove (careful not to burn it!) which gives the muffins an extra rich, nutty flavor. (Note: We cut out some of the sugar in this recipe by at least half a cup.) Chef Vanilla Icing and Chef Icer made pumpkin muffins that were dense and moist and Make it Mika and Chef Chocolat made Muffin Tops which were light and delicate. I really liked Chef Vanilla Icing and Chef Icer's recipe because of its simplicity--another potential bake sale recipe.

Chef E W made Chocolate Pumpkin Swirl Brownies which are a bit more complicated than the other recipes because it involves dividing the batter in half and mixing one half with melted bittersweet organic fair trade chocolate and the other half with pumpkin puree. It takes a bit more time and effort, but it's certainly worth it. These brownies are absolutely decadent!

One recipe that was a bit too fussy for us to make at school was the Pumpkin Swirl Cheesecake chosen by El Gwaco, Chef Majipe, and John Redford. I made this at home (omitting the pecans) and we had a taste of it at school because it takes a long time to prepare, bake and chill. Cheesecake was the most expensive recipe we tackled, because the cost of the cream cheese really can add up. I halved the recipe to make it more affordable. I also used light cream cheese to cut down on the calories which tastes just as good as the full fat cream cheese. Besides, wouldn't you rather be able to top up the decadence factor with some whipped cream on top? Oh how I LOVE whipped cream on cheesecake! Not to mention some caramel sauce. Sigh.

Finally, we made some Old Fashioned Pumpkin Cookies with Chef Lenie and Chef C. Canned pumpkin is perfectly acceptable in recipes like this one. These cookies are soft and cakey in texture and Chef Chef made an icing with icing sugar, vanilla, buttermilk, and melted butter. El Gwaco, Chef Majipe, and John Redford and drizzled the icing over the cookies while they were still warm.

I hope you try some of these recipes at home with your family.

Bonne Chance et Bon Appetit!

Baking at School: Part One

A Baking Marathon with Zucchini Mama at Simon Fraser 

Special thanks to Choices Market on Cambie for donating fresh, quality ingredients!

This week we Division 3 baked with the Curcurbit family. No, the cucurbits are not the quirky next door neighbors, they are a family of squash, including zucchini, which is a summer squash and pumpkin, which is a winter squash. Cooking with squash adds fiber and nutrients to your baked goods and has the added benefit of lending moisture and flavor to the recipe. Our local zucchini season is pretty much over so be sure to have one last go at adding them to salads or cupcakes. Leaving the skin on adds extra fiber to the recipe. Chef Renie Zucchini and Chef Coco made a delicious Apple Zucchini Salad with an apple cider vinaigrette. They worked with E W, patiently cutting up the ingredients into pretty, uniform pieces, making the salad look as good as it tasted. Chocolate Discovery Man made my favorite Chocolate Zucchini Cupcakes from the popular rebar cookbook. S and N made Zucchini Cupcakes with the addition of chocolate chips. As Jamie Oliver would say, zucchini and chocolate are best mates! I liked this recipe because the product is moist, light, and incredibly easy to make. It is the perfect bake sale recipe.

Every Saturday this winter we are lucky to have a winter farmer's market at Nat Bailey Stadium. Every week I look for the last sugar pumpkins of the season. These pumpkins are especially good for baking because the flesh is dense and tasty. I found a sugar pumpkin on sale for just two dollars, so I took out the seeds, cut it in half and rubbed it with sunflower oil. I baked it until it was soft and the skin started to separate from the pulp. This yielded about 3 1/2 cups of pulp, which is a good deal, considering that a 15 oz. can of organic pumpkin (about 2 cups) is about 3 dollars or more. Chef Death rolled out a pie crust which the students cut into circles for tarts.  Chef Lemon Head made the filling for my favorite (Zucchini Mama's Awesome) Pumpkin Pie recipe, which is sweetened with maple syrup. Chef Lemon Head's secret is to put some freshly grated lemon rind in the pie filling to give it some extra zing.

Next, we had Luchandor, Mr Chef and J make another pumpkin pie recipe which is sweetened with honey. We used buckwheat honey for a deep, rich flavor. The honey, and the fact that we used some canned pumpkin made a darker tart. Both recipes tasted sweet and rich. I hadn't made enough pie crust so we used some silicon muffin cups to bake the rest pf the filling which worked just fine (and saves on calories). Silicon muffin cups are a worthwhile investment because it saves you from buying boxes of cupcake papers. They'd make an awesome Christmas present for the baker in your family! It is recommended you season the liners with a bit of vegetable oil the first two or three times you use them to prevent the cupcakes from sticking. 

M "Biscuit" C made a scent diffuser by pushing whole cloves into the lid of a pumpkin we'd hollowed out and made square-shaped widows in. She rubbed pumpkin pie spices into the flesh of the pumpkin and put a tea light in the bottom. As the spices warmed up, it filled the room with a lovely aroma. This is an idea from our old friend Martha Stewart. (BTW, I ended up removing the top of the pumpkin because it was so small that the lid started to burn, so if you're using a small pumpkin, just leave off the top.) Next, Mercedes covered the pumpkin seeds with oil and sprinkled them with sugar and baked them at 250 F until they were toasted. (We later cut up the pumpkin diffuser and baked it to use in a recipe.)