Truffles!

Since Valentines Day is coming up we made truffles! This is split in a two day lab where in the first day we made the chocolate and the second day we rolled it to make truffles.

Here we have the cream and margarine in a sauce pan...not very exciting, waiting for it to boil.

The chocolate! Everyone in my group literally could not keep their hands off this sugary, not sweet but still deliciously awesome goodness!

Our flavouring!

It was official, my group has the most indecisive people ever, it was like "anything you want guys", "you can choose", "I like everything", "I just want to eat chocolate" when we were decided what flavours.

We decided to use vanilla after 10 minutes of debating to use vanilla or peppermint. 

This is when we took the saucepan off the heat because it was boiling and then added the chocolate to it.

Into the cake pan it goes! Our unit only had the giant cake pan so I stole another units (but there wasn't anybody there anyways). This went into the refrigerator.

This is after it was done refrigerating...I almost couldn't tell which photo this was...was it a before the fridge or after?

Rolling it out in cocoa powder. Practically everybody's chocolate when it came out of the fridge was not hard/frozen enough so it was REALLY SOFT and basically it almost reminded me of mochi when it was covered in cocoa powder. But my group's turned out pretty well! 

Our first two! We personally brought peanuts and sprinkles cuz just cocoa powder was boring...not really we just really like ones with peanuts on them.

Truffles outside: Cocoa powder, Peanuts, Sprinkles, Icing Sugar

The icing sugar one at the front (the one with a lot) reminded me of a Mexican wedding cookie and the one at the back (which has hardly any icing sugar) reminded me of a chocolate timbit you can get in Tim Hortons.

All the ones we made! After the first plate we kind of stopped caring where we placed them because we were running out of time but at least we made one good looking, presentable plate!

I had the desire to gobble up every single one of these when I was making them....

Chocolaty goodness! Everyone in our class kept asking us how we made ours not gooey/soft but it's a secret ;) A unit also asked if they could take pictures but this time we said no (usually we let them) but one of them still took a picture before we could stop them!

Watermelon Basket

So as you can tell from the title of this post or at least I hope you can, we made a watermelon basket! YAY! But it wasn't watermelon season :( so the watermelons weren't sweet.
We did the watermelon basket the same time we made the cucumber shark.

The garnishing tool we used to cut the watermelon was the 'V-Shaped Garnishing Tool' or it's also known as 'Harold Chef Harvey Decorator Knife'.

We just basically poked it through and connected each of them to make sure it comes out smoothly.

We used a melon baller to make the watermelon meat into balls. Since we only had 2, we took turns make the watermelon balls but as I found out I was not really good at this...which is weird because I have to say, I'm pretty darn good at scooping up ice cream with the ice cream scoop. So after I did a few I decided to spend my time trying to crave out hearts out of the watermelon peel (it was really hard to do) since I want to make our watermelon basket cute! :D

I felt like the handle for our basket was too thick...

I don't know why but every time I see those photos, they remind me of a whale...maybe we should have done a whale watermelon or a hedgehog.

In the end, since it wasn't watermelon season, the watermelon was not sweet at all and because the rest of my group (3 of them) had science (2 different classes and you're not allowed food because of safety/health issues) I had to take it to my Socials Studies Class since I thought it would be a waste to just throw it away like most of the class. I got some pretty weird stares as I was walking through the hall with this on a tray with toothpicks. 
Luckily I got my Socials Studies Class to finish most of it but I had to compost the rest since nobody wanted it.

Apple Bird

Here we learned how to make a apple bird garnish! This was a really fun and scary lab to do as I keep thinking I would do something totally wrong with my apple and then fail. It was really fun seeing everybody's birds and how they were totally different to each other!

 So we first made a base for out apple bird by cutting about 1/3 off a side of the apple.

 We used the paring knife to cute "V-shaped" wedges for the two side feathers and the top.

 The "feathers" with the body, I should have put a little more lemon juice as it was starting to brown a little.

 The bird with all the feather, I felt like I should have push the feathers out more to make a more outstanding bird.

 

 I felt like the head of the bird doesn't really look like a bird's head, more like a turtle...

The head was made by cutting a 1/4" strip from the base piece that we cut out.

 Finished product of the bird.

 I thought I made the sides pretty even but I should have made the feathers pushed out more. Totally regret that right now.

The head kind of ruins the magnificent bird (in my opinion)

Cucumber Shark

In this lab we got a cucumber and made a shark out of it! This lab took a lot longer than I expected but I guess it from the fear of messing up that made us take so long. This lab was really fun to do because it's really neat how we get this one thing and are able to make something 'different' with it.
We also made a watermelon basket in this lab too!