Macaroni and Cheese

On October 25th the Culinary Arts Club met and made Macaroni and Cheese, an old favorite.  Macaroni and Cheese is a fantastic dish to make because it teaches students how to create a roux which is a mixture of butter and flour, and how this roux acts as a thickening agent for a white sauce.  White sauces are very versatile and can be used in many dishes, in this dish the white sauce is made into a cheese sauce for the macaroni and cheese.  The macaroni and cheese is almost always well received by the kids and this time there was no exception.  They loved it and making the mac and cheese from scratched showed the kids that homemade mac and cheese is as tasty if not better than box mac and cheese and does not contain all the salt and preservatives that box mac and cheese contains.  The next meeting of the Culinary Arts Club will be November 8th. 

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

This week in Culinary Arts Club the kids made Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies.  As Culinary Arts Advisor I like to keep with the theme of the season, so we chose to make a cookie that included pumpkin puree.  The kids loved these cookies, they were soft, moist, and very tasty!! We took a recipe that was baked using a convection oven so some play needed to be made with both the conventional oven temperature and baking time.  We found that the cookies did take a while to bake through, about 20 minutes, which told us that perhaps next time we should turn the temperature from 375 degrees to 400 degrees.  One group realized the importance of figuring out which person will put what ingredients in the bowl before starting, when they ended up with not enough flour and a huge mess coming out of the oven.  Baking is indeed chemistry!!! That is a mistake they won't be repeating I am sure.  All in all it was a successful meeting and the kids had fun!!

Butternut Squash Soup

Our second Culinary Arts Club meeting took place on September 28th.  One of the goals of the Culinary Arts Club is to create food which utilizes local produce and what is more local then the THMS Garden? In keeping with the season, we cooked up Butternut Squash Apple Soup.  While the kids were less then impressed with the final outcome, I thought it was quite tastey.  We discussed our soup and decided it could definitely use some more spices and perhaps a touch more salt.  Garlic would have been a healthy addition as well.  Click HERE for the recipe!

We are meeting this week  (October 11th) to make another culinary masterpiece!