Genius Hour with Caitlin

For my Genius Hour Project, I have decided to do embroidery. However, I didn’t know where to start, so I decided to DM a Calgary based embroidery artist named Anna and Piotr Angiels on Instagram to ask for help. I asked them where to get started with embroidery and how to get started with embroidery. Here is what they responded with:

With that, I finally got around to starting embroidery. She mentioned starting with an embroidery kit, which I did. Luckily I already had an embroidery kit at home that I opened but never started working on. That should give me a solid foundation to start with. While I was browsing Pinterest I saw a video which demonstrated some of the basic stitches. I have decided to start with running stitch and back stitch, which I already know, and chain stitch.

I have to start a new genius Hour project. I might learn how to do embroidery, because it will seem fun to make cool design and embroider clothing. If I do decide to do embroidery, I can can show evidence of what I learned by uploading pictures onto my blog.

Another reason why I think I should do embroidery is because it takes a while to embroider a design, which will help me increase my attention span, because my attention span is really short. Also, I can work on it during class time too.

I will start off by learning the basic stitches and then start with a basic design.

This Genius Hour project came to an end. Honestly, I’m kind of happy it did.
Personally, I don’t think I did very well on the presentation. I wasn’t ready. I totally didn’t struggle. Also, I didn’t really have too much to talk about.

In retrospect, I think I should’ve chosen a different thing to learn how to do. I did not enjoy learning how to bake pastries, and it wasn’t really that challenging, because anybody who can read can bake a relatively simple recipe.

As for the next Genius Hour project, I’m not totally sure what to do yet.

Since I had nothing better to do with my life yesterday, I decided to bake a S’more mug cake, not an actual cake, because I’m too lazy for that.

The mug cake used flour(?), salt, baking soda, sugar, and crushed graham crackers. The mix then went into the microwave for 2 minutes. The cake expanded, but luckily it didn’t overflow over the edge of the mug. I had to use a cloth to grab the mug, since it was so HOT. I then chopped a random uneaten full size Aero bar from Halloween, and stuck the pieces on the mug cake. I then put it back into the microwave for 25 seconds, since it was still a little too hot. The chocolate didn’t melt, but that was fine. I also stuck some marshmallows on top, since s’mores need marshmallows, and I places it back into the microwave. However, the marshmallows DID NOT melt. When I tried eating it later, the texture was very strange. It was spongy, but not like a sponge cake. BLEGH. Not even my little sister liked it, and she eats practically everything.

HERE ARE SOME PHOTOS.

After I finished microwaving the cake, I scrolled back to the top and saw that the recipe had a 3/5 star average rating from over 500 ratings. Well, I can see why. I don’t think I will bake this again.

Yesterday, I tried to contact Bon Ton Bakery to ask them for some tips about the process of making pastries. When I checked my e-mails, I got an automatic response saying that if I had questions, they would try to answer them in one to two buisness days. Hopefully they respond soon, because this project is being presented next Wednesday. I only finally contacted them, because I procastinated for a looooooooong time. In fact, I probably should have done that in the beginning of this project. Well, I know that for next time.

UPDATE: February 21

Even though I contacted Bon Ton Bakery nearly a week ago, but they never responded, so I decided to contact Lucy’s Sweets too.

Some things I learned during this project was that I struggle with was time management. For example, during class, I always kept getting very distracted. I would always start talking to my friends, or get distracted while browising the internet. Also, I always kept procastinating writing blog posts, especially during class time. I still need to contact some experts.

This week I learned about the process of making cream puffs. To make the choux, you have to boil water, and then add the flour and other ingredients. Interesting. While browsing the internet, I found a recipe that said you can make baked cream puffs without boiling the ingredients. I might try that out.

As for presentation planning, I might talk about what I learned and maybe cook a sample, maybe a galette? I’m not sure…

This week I baked an apple galette. A galette is similar to a pie, but it isn’t baked in a shell, so it doesn’t have a restricted shape. Galettes are baked on a baking mat.

First of all, I made the dough. The dough recipe was written by Julie van Rosendaal, and olny usd 3 ingredients:water, flour, and salt. The recipe said that I needed to use 1-2 tablespoons of water, and one tablespoon wasn’t enough, so I added another. That still wasn’t enough to make the dough stick, so I added another tablespoon of water. this finally made it stick well enough. I then left the dough to rest for 15 minutes.

While the dough rested, I peeled and cut the apples. i definitely struggled with this, since it took me almost twenty mintues to cut and peel two relatively small apples.

After I finished struggling to cut the apples, I just had to roll the dough into a circular shape, and mix the apples with cinnamon and sugar. I accidentally added more thean one shake of cinnamon, but that’s fine. I finally placed the apples into the dough. I added some milk onto the edges of the folded up dough. Then I placed it into the oven, originally for 45 minutes, but I decided to leave it in for 5 more minutes.

Overall, this recipe was pretty okay. I think that I overcooked the galette because it was hard to cut, but I liked the crispiness. Next time, I would only bake this recipe for 45 minutes in the oven. I probably need to practice

So in the beginning of Genius Hour I said that I wanted to learn how to bake different pastries. I would consider my self doing pretty okay. I think that my progress is further along than what I anticipated. Since part of this project is presenting, I should probably start planning my presentation. I also need to think about consulting an expert. I think I am also behind in some blog posts, so I need to catch up on that.

I might also try to bake some cream puffs or maybe another type of galette or pie. I could also try to bake something with puff pastry too.

For this week of Genius Hour, I attempted to bake cinnamon palmiers. Palmiers are a type of French pastry.

The reicpe I used is from https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/231466/cinnamon-palmiers/

The recipe says that you needed to use one sheet of puff pastry to make 24 palmiers, so I used 1 block of Tenderflake. HOwever, this only made 12 palmiers.

During my first attempt to roll the puff pastry, I overrolled it and it became WAYYY too sticky, so I had try it again.

During the second attempt, I didn’t overoll the puff pastry. As stated earlier, the recipe actually made 24 palmiers and used 1/3 cup of sugar for inside of the palmiers. That was way too much sugar, and it kept falling out as i tried to cut the pastry. Also, the pastry kept falling apart and not sticking.

When I put the palmiers into the oven, after they finished baking they unrolled themselves and there was a LOT of burned sugar on the bottom because I addded too much cinnamon and sugar.

The palmiers were too sweet and there was a lot of burned sugar on the bottom of them, making them really crunchy, and not in a good way. In conclsuion, I think this recipe was a big fail.

I didn’t have too much time to bake anything, so I decided to try baking some cinnamon bun cookies.

Here is the recipe link: https://www.iheartnaptime.net/cinnamon-roll-sugar-cookies/

Actually, I was pretty surprised that the recipe took a lot longer than I expected it to be. I had to chill the dough in the fridge for 30 minutes.

The dough was a lot thicker than some other cookie recipes I baked in the past.

After mixing the ingredients together it was time to put the dough into the fridge to chill for half an hour.

While the dough chilled, I decided to make the cream cheese icing that the cookie dough recipe came with. I decided to halve the icing recipe so that some of the cookies aren’t as sweet for middle aged people, like my mom.

For the icing, I used cream cheese, butter, icing sugar , vanilla extract, and some milk. While I was making the icing, I decided to try some and it was very tasty.

After the dough finished baking, I left them on a cooling rack to cool down. After that, I finished icing them. Since I couldn’t find any piping bags I decided to use a Ziploc bag with a hole cut in the corner.

I think I did pretty good on this recipe, because the cookies tasted and looked not too bad. As you can see, I don’t have much expertise using icing due to a lack of experience. The icing was wonderful, but the cookies were kind of dense and I think the cookies could’ve used more cinnamon in them. I also forgot to sprinkle cinnamon over the fresh icing, so that might have something to do with it. In conclusion, I think this recipe was pretty sucessful, yet it was kind of time consuming.