What food lasts forever in your pantry and can fill an army of friends on the cheap? SQUASH!!! That's right, squash is part of the cucurbita family and boast many health benefits for low cost, long shelf-life produce.
Squash Your Hunger
January is a cold month amidst the dark hours of winter. To brighten our spirits and palettes, we cooked with gourd-geous organge hues to squash our hunger. The first recipe involved curry, apples, onions and pumpkin. We made Autumn Squash Soup, which was a great decision for a frigid afternoon. The bomb cyclone was headed our way, so we needed to warm up quickly.
Soup Prep
Preparation was a snap with a responsive team. Ingredients were sauteeing before I had relayed all the steps in the process. The kitchen filled with savory scents, calling to our bellies.
Bubble and Boil
Once the soup was complete, it needed to be blended to a smooth consistency. I brought my trusty immersion blender to class just for this step. Students were fascinated by the speed and precision of the immersion blender. "We need more recipes using that tool!"
Blended Squash Soup
I learned some fun facts preparing for this class.Cucumbers are part of the squash family. Look at the species name- cucurbita. Cucumbers fit in the name! An adult student who likes to participate so she learns new life skills took ownership of a Creamy Cucumber Salad.
Whipped up in Minutes
This salad was mighty popular and a great way to cool off tongues after eating a hot soup. Dill and cucumber are cool ingredients versus a hot curry or spicy onion.
A Cheesy Butternut Squash Pasta plate was tackled by a third team. This seemed to be the most unusual of our recipes. The girls made a cheesy sauce with blended squash and tons of cheese. This sauce was mixed to cooked pasta and voila! Cheesy goodness that disappeared in moments.
So good, it was Gone!
Now that the savory plates are covered, we can step into Sweetsville.
Muffin Mania
Pumpkin Cream Cheese Swirl Muffins were the first stop in Sweetsville. This is not an actual town, but the place we all like to be when making meals. Desserts are often coveted, despite knowing we need savory foods, too. The library is undergoing construction, so some important tools are trapped from usage. It turned out that the hand mixer is one of the hostages. Therefore, team mates took turns flexing their muscles and working the cream cheese to a fluffy consistency.
Mmmm...muffins
This was a winner recipe! I took this photo before the pan emptied with few crumbs remaining. Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies were the last recipe to tackle in our plan. I wanted to test the theory that gluten free (GF) all purpose flour acts equivalently to regular all purpose (AP) flour.
Cookie Experiment
In theory, GF flour should equate to AP flour. The recipe mixed up just fine, but we noticed a major difference in cooking. These cookies were only supposed to take 12-15 minutes to bake, but the GF flour seemed to cause a delay. This recipe took upwards of 20-25 minutes per batch to firm up.
Yummy in my Tummy!
Regardless of the extra bake time, students still called these cookies, "Yummy in my tummy!" My favorite joke for this recipe was a teen consistently calling them Goatmeal Cookies. I finally understood his reference to the Gluten-free part. This student often expresses his opinion that Gluten Free recipes result in cardboard quality products. "Only goats eat cardboard." I found that hungry teens and tweens devour Goatmeal Cookies, too.
Time to Eat!
Many thanks to Wegmans Food Markets for sponsoring this teen cooking club. The community of Corning, New York is supportive of these learning lessons and we are grateful. The Local Steelworkers Union Hall provides our giant kitchen, the students provide the fun.
Let's Go Shopping
This wraps up another delicious cooking club event. Join us in February as we go shopping at Wegmans Food Market. We will meet and shop just like a large family preparing to stock up their pantry for the month. Their chefs will also engage us with a cooking demonstration! That will be fun to see how the professionals get the task complete.
Teen Cooking Club celebrated the anniversaries of our lives with a Birthday Bash on Friday, November 13, 2015. The menu was Italian cuisine and topped off with an ice cream social.
Caesar Salad
The first course was Caesar Salad. We sourced the recipe from Betty Crocker. There were no leftovers, despite it's soggy nature...
We recommend using A LOT LESS dressing
Next on plate was a first time attempt in our cooking repertoire, so a slight challenge to all.
Any guesses???
Stuffed Shells are a fun alternative to an average pasta dish. This recipe was simple, but time consuming. Bake time was 40-50 minutes, which meant the team needed to hustle to accomplish this task.
Stuffed and ready for the oven
Ready to get stuffed in the belly.
This was a definite winner for taste appeal. This fed 19 students with no left overs. We could certainly have increased our shell quantity and still have eaten all of this goodness.
(It went so quickly, I didn't even get a taste!)
Garlic Bread
It seems bread is a necessity in Italian cuisine, so Garlic Bread was a must. This was a simple recipe, yet I found a way to slice my own finger when instructing the students on how to chop garlic. Band-Aids to the rescue; I'm happy that mistake happened to me and not a student!!!
Sugar Cookie Cups
The finale was supposed to be Sugar Cookie Cups. They looked almost perfect in the oven. The trouble is that I sourced a picture for inspiration, but no actual recipe to give any tips on baking these beauties.
These images make it seem so easy!
This was a moment where we looked at our results and ditched the idea for a new approach...Cookie Crumble!
Perhaps a little cooking spray would have released these???
If the cookie crumbles, eat it!
Cake is a traditional way to end a Birthday Bash, but we opted for ice cream instead. This was "It's My Party" flavor, from Wegmans, with cake and icing all inside the container. What an ingenious plan! Cookie crumble on the side made this the perfect finale.
It's My Party!
Everyone enjoyed full plates of goodness that they all worked diligently to share.
Some wonderful helpers made sure all the dishes were done...
Dishes and Clean up are a big part of Teen Cooking Club
While some participants needed a party activity to take up some of the down time...
Musical chairs has no age limit.
This cooking club concludes the year of Teen Cooking Club. December entertains both Teen Cooking Club and First Friday Art Club in our annual Make & Bake Gifts event.
Check back in Teen Tones to get a taste for this fantastic event.
