Friday, June 4, 2010

Kitchen disaster and a learning moment

Today we let our son Stephen make chocolate chip cookies without anyone helping him.

Stephen is 9 and going to school via SIDES and therefore we get to decide what his school day is like.   We have been cooking with him a lot, actually baking as he has decided he wants to be a pastry chef - an award winning pastry chef    He has baked chocolate chip cookies with us before, the last time he did almost all of it by himself.

I came up as he was dishing the cookie dough onto the cookie sheet.   I thought the dough did not seem quite right but I ignored that.  In the oven they went and 9 minutes later this is what came out.

Turns out Stephen had to use eight tablespoons of butter and so he filled the tablespoon measure eight times, but the butter was heaped and not flat.  He ended up with too much butter and the cookies were very thin and crispy and greasy.

This was a great chance to teach him about the importance of accuracy in measuring in baking and the impact of more fat in a recipe.  It also gave me a chance for a math lesson as I had him figure out how many millilitres in eight tablespoons - he managed to figure it out, 120 ml.   This is also half a cup.

I am still enjoying this homeschooling thing with Stephen and I will write some more about it soon and post it at this link.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If he's using way too much butter the only two options are teaching him to measure or sending him to France.

Catherine Novak said...

It's ok Stevie - I burnt the brownies just the other night.... and they came from a BOX.

Michael Maguire said...

Nice! Speaking of France, I remember when I was his age bringing home a recipe from school (French Immersion in Ontario) and trying to make it myself, with a bit of help from my Mom. The only problem was abbreviations in French:

1 C. => Une cuillere (= a tablespoon)
1 T. => Une tasse (=a cup)

You can guess how I reversed the measurements. Similar results to your son...