The paradox in Swine Flue prevention week is that the school had all the teachers sign up for a dorm slot this weekend to help out the residence staff who are already exhausted from a week or more of caring for sick kids. They need help getting the basic work done. I went to Palmgarten this morning from 11-2. I spent my time in the kitchen doing lunch prep and baking. It's actually rather fun to bake in a dorm because they have HUGE equipment. So I used their big convection oven in which I can bake at least 10 pans of cookies at a time if I want.
I first made scones. I had to make the same recipe three times to have different flavors. So I had three mixing bowls on the counter and I did the measurements three times. I made plain, cranberry and raspberry-white chocolate scones. After mixing all the ingredients, I made little round loaves which I then but into 8 wedges. I documented the process below.
I ended up with 4 dozen scones - 16 of each kind. The raspberry-chocolate ones were gooey when they came out of the oven so I put them in a bit longer - and forgot about them. So they are the very brown ones. I think these are for breakfast tomorrow.
To do dorm sized baking you need a LOT of ingredients. They have these cool rolling bins for flour, sugar, and brown sugar.
Job #2 was to peel and cut vegetables for lunch. I had this done by noon and it was back to baking.
Job #3 was to prep the snack for this afternoon - Peach crisp. That is a simple recipe so it didn't take long since I didn't bake it. I set it aside for later. The pan is the size of the cookies pans above but twice as deep.
Job #4 was to make cookies. I brought my chocolate peanut butter recipe with me. I did the math this morning and tripled the recipe hoping for 6 dozen. I was not looking forward to rolling all the cookies. I had to put the leftover berries from the scones in the freezer and noticed a tray of perfectly round cookie balls on a shelf. The dorm staff had made cookies earlier and frozen the dough. That got me wondering. How do they get them so round? And so uniform? Then I wandered by the sink where the clean dishes were sitting. And I spotted an ice cream scoop the exact size of the balls in the freezer. I tried it out and it worked perfectly. So I had perfectly sized cookies for the dorm and I didn't get my hands dirty! I had to laugh when I rummaged through the drawer in the baking area later - there were several ice cream scoops among the pasty blenders, measuring spoons, etc. Who would have thought? I ended up with 6 dozen cookies balls but only 5 dozen cookies because I dropped a pan as it came out of the oven!
I had hoped to make 2 types of cookies and freeze half the balls for the dorm but I ran out of time. I think the best part of the day was when the girls began to wander into the kitchen because they smelled the cookies. They then would ask "Miss Young, who baked the cookies?" And then there were looks of utter disbelief when I told them I did. I'm sure their shock won't affect their appetites when it comes time to eat them.
