fandomhigh | Baking Workshop 7/10, Monday Morning

Entry tags:

cooking

Baking Workshop 7/10, Monday Morning

Piper smiles at the students as they arrive. She kind of already fears for the home ec classroom. "Good morning everyone. I'm Piper, in case some of you don't already know that."

She points out a plate of brownies on the counter. "I usually make samples of the assignments I choose. Today is no exception. As you can see, you're going to bake brownies today."

She hands them each a list of ingredients and instructions. "I try to make the instructions as easy to follow as possible, but, if you ever have questions or need help with anything, please don't hesitate to ask."

Equipment Needed

bowl

8x8 baking pan

dish towel or oven mitt

spatula

mixing spoon

measuring cups

measuring spoons

Ingredients

6 Tablespoons Cocoa

1/4 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1/2 Teaspoon vanilla

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup flour

1 cup toasted pecans (optional)

2 eggs

Instructions

Melt 1/4 cups of butter in a microwaveable dish.

Measure 6 tablespoons of Cocoa powder into the mixing bowl.

Add melted butter and mix.

Add to Batter (1 cup sugar, 2 eggs, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, 1/3 cup flour, 1/4 teaspoon salt).

Mix batter.

Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees.

Flour the Pan (cover pan with butter, then add some flour to keep brownies from sticking)

Pour the brownie batter into the dish.

Put the brownies into the oven for 35-40 minutes.

Let them cool until slightly warm.

[ooc: ingredients and instructions from here.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sakurazaki chews her lip a little as she looks at the oven. "I've got to admit, my experience with one has been pretty little, too. I mean, half the things we eat in Japan never touches a frying pan. But I do know that you turn it on like this." She reaches for the knob. "What did it say to set it to? //325?//" She says the number in Japanese because she can't remember what it was in English unless she took the time to break it down by individual parts.

"Huh? No, 325," Alphonse corrected, not quite catching it was said in Japanese first. "I'll take the first step, and you can start on the second one, and we can follow that pattern from there, if that works out for you."

"San...Ni...Go..." Sakurazaki matches up the numbers in her head as she turns the dial carefully. "325. Got it."

And then she straightens with a nod and a grin at Alphonse. "That sounds like it might work well."

"So I need 1/4 of this..." Alphonse carefully cut the amount needed from a butter stick. "And then melt it for..." He trailed off, eyeing the microwave. Okay, so he didn't know how long he was supposed to put it in for, so he figured a minute or two should work. After he finished with that, he turned to Sakurazaki, "How'd your trip with Ranma go over the weekend?"

"Relatively well," she starts idly glancing at the next step, her step, and focuses on it while she tells him. "The monks weren't able to do anything, which was very disappointing, but they were able to give me some inform--"

Sakurazaki jumps a little as the butter, definately not needing as long as a minute or two to melt, starts popping and splattering over the microwave. "Eep!" She quickly pushes the button to open the door, frowning at the streaks of butter dripping down it. "Well, it's melted now..."

"Oh!" Alphonse grimaced, meekly stepping forward immidiately. "Sorry, I didn't know it'd melt that fast! Aw, drat... I'll clean it up." He looked around before grabbing a few ~~conveniently placed~~ paper towels.

"Heh, it's okay. Microwaves are tricky." Sakurazaki smiles at him as she returns to measuring the cocoa. "I would have probably done the same thing."

"I think I've got all the right amounts of this stuff," she says. "Looks like we add them together?"

"Hmm," Alphonse overlooked the ingredients again, making sure they were all measured correctly. "I think so. Doesn't hurt to try."

Sakurazaki gets the spoon ready to stir while Alphonse pours the butter into the bowl.

"It says 'add batter,' next," she says, glancing over as she mixes, perhaps a little too well because of her unconscious arm stength. Her face is marked with sudden worry. "Do we have batter?"

"We gotta mix it in with the rest of this-" Alphonse pointed to everything else listed in the parenthesis. "-and then we've got our batter. Let's split up measuring this stuff and toss it in the bowl."

Sakurazaki nods. "I'll take the first three, you take the last two?" She suggested that route because eggs were relatively easy to count. Although, handling them, she gets a little pale. "Um, but if you could crack the eggs in? That'd be great."

She sets them aside and focuses on the other parts.

"Er," Alphonse looked down at the eggs, which seemed to be staring at him back. He picked one up a little warily. "I... could try." It probably was a mistake deciding to crack the eggs first; it didn't matter how many times Winry had showed him this exact procedure flawlessly back home, Alphonse always somehow managed to screw this part up. This attempt was no difference-- he had hit the egg against the edge of the bowl too hard and the yolk went all over his hand. Granted, most of it did get inside the bowl, including the other half of the eggshell. Alphonse bit his lip and carefully pulled out the shell with a yolk-covered hand. Afterwards he slowly turned at Sakurazaki's direction. "Um."

Sakurazaki winced at the sound of the egg cracking, and then it grew into a full-on cringe when she saw the destruction that Alphonse's attempts had wraught. She gulps, handing him more paper towel. "I guess...uh...I guess I'll get the other egg."

Wincing reluctance aside, she really can crack an egg pretty well. She seems to do it with a sort of reverence and delicacy. She carefully picks out any shells she might have noticed he missed.

"And I'll get the salt and flour," after wiping his hand off of the yolk (and then having to wander off to wash it, since apparently paper towels did not rid of stickiness), Alphonse went off to do just that. At least he was familiar with having to measure off ingridients like this, and then had to remind himself that he didn't need to be so precise-- this was cooking, not some science experiment. Afterwards he took the salt and flour and dumped them into the bowl.

Sakurazaki sets to the next task, mixing the batter, because that definately seemed easy enough and she seemed to have a knack for it, too. Her eyes skim down the list a bit.

"Hey, I think we're done with all the mixing!" She's very happy about that part, merely because it seems like the disasters have all be avoided.

"I think we are!" Alphonse skimmed down the list once again. "Okay, pan... butter, flour... I think that part should be easy enough." He picked up what remained of the stick of butter and began spreading it across the pan.

Batter well-mixed, Sakurazaki grabs a handful of flour, sprinkling some over the pan once Alphonse has ran the butter over it. "Look! It's snowing!" She grins, chuckling lightly. This was going much better than the last time she tried this.

"And these lucky brownies get to play in it," Alphonse laughed. After Sakurazaki was done, he took the bowl of batter and began pouring it into the pan. Of course, Alphonse also had to poke his finger in the bowl and stick a chocolate covered finger in his mouth.

Grinning slightly at the idea of brownies playing in the snow, Sakurazaki also wrinkles her nose at Alphonse. "Does that actually taste good? I mean, can't raw eggs make you really sick if you're not careful?"

"Never stopped us from doing it as kids," Alphonse said, smiling.

Chuckling slightly over a slight pang of envy, Sakurazaki tilts her head, smoothing out some of the batter with a spatula. "Did you do a lot of baking when you were little?"

"Our mom did," he replied with a hint of nostalgia. "Sometimes Ed and I would help, or make a huge mess. We always insisted on eating some of the batter before she baked it."

A demure smile of recollection flashed onto Sakurazaki's face. "They always caught us whenever Ojou-sama and I tried to sneak into the kitchens." There's a light laugh. "I suppose my training really did need a lot of work."

After a second of biting her lip, Sakurazaki feels the need to change the subject. "Think they're ready to go in?"

"The oven should be hot enough by now," Alphonse pulled the handle open to the oven, holding a hand out briefly before nodding. "Yup! This should be good."

Sakurazaki quickly arms herself with the oven mitts and carefully slides the pan in. "There we go!" She firmly shuts the oven door, starts pulling off the mitts and grinning rather proudly. "What next? Just waiting?"

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