Would You Buy Food From a Place Called The Bite-Sized Bakery?

Warning: These are the rantings of a Food Scientist.

Watching the Food Network and I realize I know a lot of the things they're talking about now. Just today, the Barefoot Contessa mentioned a couple things I had learned about recently.
Blanching is a cooking process where you boil the food (usually a vegetable) and then plunge it into ice cold water after. This preserves the nutrients for freezing and gives the food a great color! Also, beware of over-mixing mashed potatoes, because agitating the starches too much makes them react and makes the consistency of your potatoes paste-y.

I'm really enjoying my Food Science classes. My lab is fascinating! I'm learning science-y things but I get to make food while doing it! We've had labs about sugar and how different types of sugar affect consistency, cookie textures, hard crack times and so on. I've made fondant, taffy, peanut brittle, and caramel. All of these are either amorphous or crystalline types of candy and rely heavily on cook time and temperature.

Hard Crack

Peanut Brittle

Taffy

I've made ice cream, custard, and sherbet and understand the difference between the three. The ice cream machine was really cool as well. We had to add salt to the ice to lower the freezing point.

Chocolate Sherbet

Frozen Custard

-- Sorry, I'm a little excited so I'm going to keep listing things I've done in my lab. --

We've learned about fruit and vegetable processing. Little known fact, bananas are one of the few fruits that still ripen after they are picked. You can stop this ripening process by placing them in the fridge. The peel will go brown, but the banana will still be good. Oh! Get this! One of the labs we tried a bunch of random fruit and vegetables I've never even heard of.

Sunchoke (Jerusalem Artichoke)

Buddha's Hand

Kohlra

Star Fruit

Endive, Radicchio, Leek, Tarot, Rutabaga, Kohlrabi, Bok Choi, Parsnips, Sunchoke, Star Fruit, Kumquat, Buddha's Hand, Passion Fruit.

Parsnips

Leek

FOOD IS SO COOL. I've canned some vegetables, made some jelly from scratch and preserved it in a jar, and used starch to make cherry pie filling. Starch is so cool guys. It's in so many foods and helps with gelation. That's what happens when things form a gel.

And today, TODAY, I made tofu. That's uber cool because I've never even seen tofu. I'm sheltered. That, and I tried 20 different types of cheese. My favorite's Gouda. :)

Brie. Freaking delicious when melted on crackers.

Cambozola Black Label. Creamy. Tastes awful.

Gjetost - The lovechild of cheese and caramel flavor.

Gouda. One of my favorites.

Gruyere Cheese. Tastes like campfire.

Also, today I made some Nutella cupcakes. Just a day in the life.

Here's the recipe in case you wanted it.

Nutella Cupcakes

-this recipe will make around 24 cupcakes

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

• 3/4 cups unsweetened cocoa powder

• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda

• 3/4 teaspoon salt

• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil

• 3/4 cup buttermilk

• 3/4 cup warm water

• 2 eggs

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 350F/170C. Using a stand mixer, combine all dry ingredients (flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt) and mix. Turn mixer to low and add eggs, vanilla, oil, water and buttermilk. Mix until combined. Line muffin/cupcake pan with liners and fill cups 2/3 full. Bake for 20 minutes. Allow to cool completely before frosting. 

Nutella Buttercream

Ingredients:

• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

• 2 cups icing sugar

• 3/4 cup Nutella

• 3-4 Tablespoons heavy cream or milk

• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Procedure:

In bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter until light and fluffy. Add icing sugar and combine. Add vanilla, Nutella and cream one tablespoon at a time until desired consistency is reached.

(I only used one tablespoon of milk and I whipped my frosting until it was light and fluffy.) Drizzle with Nutella.

Heck yeah Cupcake Tower

 The End.

Excuse me while I take a sec to breathe.

Whoa. Man have I been busy. I thought it was bad before, now I barely have any time not filled with classes, projects, papers, study groups, or tests! My brain is going to explode!!
It's almost ironic that today is a Tuesday because Tuesdays are my busiest days as far as classes go. I've somehow found some time before I start dinner and Christopher gets home.

Okay, so a recap on the past almost month:
My Birthday.

We are so in sync.

It was epic. A lot more epic than I thought it would be since I got stuck working all day on my Golden Birthday. Well, I got off work early at like 6 so Christopher, being the wonderful husband that he is, took me to dinner at Outback Steakhouse. It was soo good! I got a free dessert that we were almost too full to eat! After that, we had a dance party with the gang.(And by that I mean we played Just Dance 2014 until the wee hours of the morning).


We actually celebrated my birthday the next day. I had to wake up early to take a test, then we went to see the Lego Movie before Maddy had to go to work. When we dropped her off at Iceberg for work, we got some burgers, fries, and bomb milkshakes for lunch. After that, we went to prep for my party! Ashleigh and Kolby were my bartenders and made me mixed drinks all night. I was in charge of giving everyone money when they won the games Christopher had planned. They had to use this money to buy drinks and cake if they wanted it.

The following Friday (February 28th), we went to a Mardi Gras party at UVU. There was dancing, a photobooth, pixie stix, cotton candy, spray on tattoos, snakes, hypnotism, and a magician. So we were pretty much in a sugar induced state of hyper the whole night. Here's some pictures:

The next day we drove around and stopped at the haunted locations of Provo then played Monopoly until like 4am. I lost around 11pm and went to bed. And Sunday we gave each other facials and watched the Oscars.

Hot.

 Oh, and here's a funny story. When we went to Olive Garden to use my birthday coupon our server informed us that he was two weeks new and would probably mess up. Sure enough, as soon as he brought our drinks, he took one off the tray and the other two toppled off and into my lap! A boy from a nearby table leapt to my rescue, giving me his napkin. Our server seemed to avoid us after that and our meals took forever to arrive. Poor kid, he even forgot our appetizer - we used the coupon on a dessert instead. The manager stopped by to joke that since I got an unexpected shower that he would pay for my meal. They almost gave me an Olive Garden shirt to change into as well. So really, we made out like bandits! Two meals with drinks and a dessert with our giftcard was a whopping total of like $11. Servers can spill drinks on me more often! I was only slightly soggy as we ate our dinner.

 That's pretty much it as far as adventures go. Christopher and I have started swimming with Kolby at the BYU pool. I love it. Didn't realize I was missing swimming until I got back in the water.

We're doing school and work. Always busy. I'm looking for summer internships (preferably paid), so if any of you have connections, hook me up!

And one last exciting bit of exciting news: Christopher got accepted to BYU for the Spring semester! He's super excited! And he just got promoted to the 30 hour teller positions. Go Christopher! He's Awesome.

Okay, that's it. The End.