Cooking parties

November has been a really busy month for cooking parties! Thanks to everyone who booked me, I've loved teaching you all how much fun it is to cook.

Here are some photos for you to look at....



Rolling Crispy Candy Sushi Snacks



Prepping crab and cucumber for California Sushi Rolls



Rolling California Rolls on bamboo mats.



Rolling our homemade pasta dough.

Making Cinnamon Tortilla chips for dessert nachos

Crispy Candy Sushi Snacks ready for packing up as party favors.

Chinese Food Week at LAC

Chicken and Pineapple Stir-fry


Baked Spring Roll and Sticky Maple Chicken Drumstick


Hot from the oven - Baked Spring Rolls!

What a busy day we had on Thursday! Our teens made a delicious meal of Chicken and pineapple stir-fry (see photo above) , fried rice, Baked spring rolls and Mini oreo cheesecakes. Our younger classes learned how to make a finger-licking Sticky Maple chicken drumsticks, fried rice and baked spring rolls. Take a look at the photos to see how much fun we had....

Making baked spring rolls

Soups and Scones

We are in the middle of our fall session and everyone is doing great!
Today in our Beginners I class, we learned how to make Corn and Potato chowder and Maple Scones. You can see from the photo above how well the scones came out, we used maple leaf cutters and brushed them with a delicious maple icing.



We read the recipe carefully and measure all our ingredients beforehand - mise en place.





Our maple scones ready for the oven.



Time to eat! We spread our icing on the scones with paint brushes.







Our teens cutting leeks for Leek and Potato Soup.



Cooking apples for Apple Turnovers.



Delicious apple turnovers fresh from the oven.

Halloween Workshop Photos

We had a really fun time last week teaching a Halloween cooking workshop at Groton library.

Thanks to Deborah for inviting "Let's All Cook"to come and share our recipes with a great group of teens. I'd like to share with you the photos we took of our evening.


Grilling the quesadillas


Cutting the quesadillas


Halloween Quesadillas with Sickly Salsa

Spooky Spider cookies


Graveyard Dirt Puddding


Making Vampire's Blood Punch

Devilled Eye Balls

Serving Ghoulish Gazpacho

Halloween Recipes for Kids

My Halloween workshop is coming up next week and I've come up with some really great recipes for "kid's to make themselves". I'd love to share them with you all, so that you can make treats for your family and friends or plan your holiday party. Have fun!

Halloween Recipes for Kids

Ghoulish Gazpacho or Vampire's Vomit is actually a delicious cold soup full of healthy veggies. It can be served as an appetizer in shot glasses or small cups.

Devilled Egg Eyeballs are hard boiled eggs stuffed with a spicy filling. Red gel is piped on for blood shot veins and then they're topped with olives for spooky eyeballs.

Halloween Quesadillas with Sickly Salsa - These quesadillas are filled with orange cheese and black beans, then served with a really sickly looking salsa!

Witches Fingers. Cookies or rice krispie treats are colored green and shaped like fingers. A red painted almond (fingernail) is then pressed into the tip to make a creepy treat.

Graveyard Dirt Pudding. Serve this ghostly dessert in individual cups and each of your guests can decorate their own with cookie gravestones, spiders and gummy worms.

Spooky Spiders. These haystack cookies are made with chocolate, raisins, nuts and crunchy chowmein noodles which stick out like spider's legs.

Vampire's Blood Punch. This icy blood red beverage is so spooky it has eyeballs floating in it!

Fall is Apple Season

"Let's All Cook" cooking classes are off to great start! Thanks to all the kids and parents for a really successful and "delicious" class today. Our recipes today were based on the new crop of apples now appearing in our New England orchards - Apple galettes ( a free form apple pie made with a cream cheese pie crust) and Homemade Pop Tarts (made with the same pie dough). If you've never made a cream cheese pie crust, please give this a try, especially if you've had problems rolling pie dough. The cream cheese makes the dough really malleable and forgiving and is quite fail safe. Always try to refrigerate the dough for at least 30 minutes, this gives the butter a chance to harden up and will make the crust more flaky.

If you're cooking with your kids, it's always a good idea to make individual portion recipes if you can. Kids really don't to wait for over one hour for their food to cook, so many of my recipes are for individual servings, such as pies or mini cheesecakes, which take less than one hour to prep and bake.

This recipe for Apple Galettes is great for kids, once the dough is made, each kid gets to roll out their own piece, fill it with apples, form the pie and then glaze it with egg white and sugar. It's their very own pie from start to finish and they are usually more likely to eat it!

Looking for great family day out? Try pick-your-own apple picking in one of our many orchards in Massachusetts. I've only lived here for 6 years and so this activity is still a novelty for my family and me. I have visited several in the Acton area, namely Carlson orchards and Westward orchards in Harvard, and Berlin orchards in Bolton, which even has a hayride and pony rides. For a more comprehensive list of orchards, see pickyourown.org and don't forget to visit the local pumpkin patches and corn mazes later in the month.

My mom Shirley at Carlson orchard.

Healthier Cooking classes this Fall

Summer is already over and the kids are back to school. So that means that my kid's cooking classes will be starting soon. I like to try new recipes as much as I can, so I have been searching around for ones that are quick, fun and tasty. I've heard that the Beginners 2 class is already full, so I'll wait and see how the other classes do.

I like to teach the kids about nutrition and healthy eating, but we still do our fair share of baking. I have, however, been cutting back on the sugar and butter in the recipes - the kids don't seem to notice. (Martha Stewart recipes have way too much sugar). I've also substituted wholewheat flour in some recipes and they still haven't complained. It's our job as parents to enrich our kid's diets - slip in extra veggies when you can, cut up fruit into fruit salad, reduce your trips to the fast food restaurant and cook with your kids instead. Break out of that rut and search for different recipes for your family. All of my kid's recipes can be made in approximately 3o minutes! That's quicker than having pizza delivered!

We will be celebrating 2 holidays this session - Halloween and Thanksgiving. I love Halloween, I get the chance to do really scary recipes (not really), but I do have a great recipe for "witches fingers" and "eyeball punch". That reminds me, I still have to come up with with some vampire themed recipes for Groton library. I'll probably have to do something with tomato sauce and garlic.... Does anyone have any ideas for me?

Here is a recipe I found on a blog recently that I'm thinking will be great for my cooking class. It's called "Zebra cake"



Zebra Cake
Ingredients:
4 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup milk
1 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/8 tsp. almond extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
2 ½ tbsp. cocoa powder

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 350°. Line a 9-inch round cake pan with a circle of parchment paper. Lightly grease the bottom and sides of the pan.
• In a large bowl, mix together the eggs and sugar until mixture is light and creamy and the sugar has been mostly dissolved. Stir in milk, vegetable oil, vanilla and almond extracts.
• In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Pour into wet ingredients and whisk to combine.
• Measure out just over two cups of vanilla batter and put it back into the medium bowl. Sift cocoa powder over the bowl and whisk until fully incorporated.
• Put 3 tablespoons of vanilla batter into the center of the pan and let it spread slightly on its own. Put 3 tablespoons of chocolate batter in the center of the vanilla. It will push out the other and, as it sits for a moment, will also spread itself. Alternating spoonfuls of the two batters, repeat the technique until all the batter has been used up.
• Bake for 38-42 minutes, until the cake is light gold and a tester inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.
• Let the cake cool in the pan for 10-15 minutes, then turn out the cake and remove the parchment paper. Reinvert onto a wire rack and let cool completely. Frost if desired.
  Source: Baking Bites