Sunday, July 29, 2012

Cooking Camp 2012

We just finished our second week of cooking camp at school. It is such a fun camp to teach each summer. I teach it with a good friend who is also a teacher. Each year we change our menu up and come up with all new themes. Here are some highlights from our two weeks of camp. We do the same menu both weeks since we have different kids each week.

Day #1- French Favorites
Menu: cream puffs, crepes, beignets, and caramel apple parfaits.
*Apparently I was too excited about this day and too involved in snacking that I totally forgot to take pictures of the parfaits.

Cream puffs fresh out of the oven. We made homemade whipped cream to serve with them.

I have never been to this restaurant but I do plan on ordering a case of this beignet mix.
I had never had a beignet before camp and I plan on making them a regular food group from now on.

We heated up some oil for frying

Cut them into squares

Flipped them a few times

Right out of the oil

Powdered sugar

Our sweet camper waiting for his beignet, he left camp this day with powdered sugar all over his face and glasses. So adorable.

You have to cover them in powdered sugar!

We made fresh crepes.

The kids ate them with fresh whipped cream, chocolate, honey, or fresh fruit.


He was excited!

Day #2- Beach Bites
Menu: sun in the sky pies, watermelon agua fresca, beach ball pizza, and ice cream.

I baked the sun cookies at home the night before so they would be ready for the kids to decorate the next day.

We heated up some corn syrup and the kids brushed a layer on the cookies so that the sprinkles would stick.




We made vanilla and lemon pudding earlier in the day and once it had set we filled up the mini pie crusts with pudding and placed the sun cookies on top. The eyes are chocolate chips and melted chocolate for a smile.

The next thing we did was cut up all the fruit for the beach ball fruit pizza.



The base of the pizza was a big sugar cookie and the "sauce" or frosting was cream cheese, vanilla, and powdered sugar.



We drew in sections to make it look like a beach ball once the areas were filled with fruit.


Almost finished!

The final step was to crush up graham crackers to look like sand.
The kids loved that extra step!

 Next up was the watermelon agua fresca
It took a lot of kids cutting up a lot of watermelon.


They all squeezed limes.



We added agave nectar to sweeten the drink.

Pureed the watermelon and added some fresh mint.

Everything tastes better with a little umbrella!

 Homemade strawberry ice cream

So fresh!


Day #3- April Fool's Food
Menu: sushi, chicken and corn, magic potion, dirt cups.

We started the day off by making three flavors of KoolAid and freezing them in ice cube trays.


We added Sprite to the ice cubes to make our magic potion- it changed colors as the cubes melted and the kids thought it was so fun!

We also had to make chocolate pudding for our dirt cups.

To make our dirt cups more realistic we filled up a paper cup and fit it in a real clay pot!
The kids crunched up the oreos and we layered them with chocolate pudding.

You have to have the gummy worms!
We used leftover green colored coconut from another project to make grass.


Added a fake flower and we were finished!

Yum!

 Next up we had to make two huge batches of rice crispy treats for two different recipes.
I could eat rice crispy treats all day long....

Sticky mess....we found that it was helpful to spray our hands with Pam spray when molding the rice crispy treats in our hands.

The first thing we made with our treats was sushi!
The kids were so creative with this part, I was amazed. They had tons of fun doing it on their own and creating all kinds of sushi!

We used gum drops and sweedish fish.

The fruit rolls ups were used in place of seaweed.

Each kid got a handful of cereal and they got busy creating!

We used sprinkles to look like the caviar. You have to use your imagination...



After making sushi we made mini hamburgers (sliders) and fries.
We added green food coloring to coconut to make lettuce.

The buns are vanilla wafers, yellow frosting is mustard, red starburst is tomato, and the meat is a grasshopper cookie.



The fries were sugar cookies and the ketchup was strawberry jam.


Sweet girl eating her slider.
Isn't the bow adorable? I wish I could still pull that look off.

The last thing we did this day was make our fried chicken and corn on the cob.
We broke pretzel rods in half and dipped them in white chocolate. Then we stuck two mini marshmallows on the end to look like the chicken bone. Once the chocolate hardens you dip them in white chocolate again to cover the marshmallows.

Once it is dry you mold your rice crispy treats around the bone to make a chicken drumstick!

Then you roll them in some crushed up corn flakes so they look fried!

Now for the corn....take some twinkies and cover them in yellow frosting.

Sort out some jelly beans that could look like corn kernels and start putting them in rows.


Add clear sprinkles for salt and the butter is starburst candy.

Now comes the fun part! Make it look real!
I picked up a KFC bucket from the store and we piled our chicken in!

So fun.

Then you eat!

Now for the last day of camp. For this day we wanted all of our recipes to coordinate with a children's book. It's the teacher in us that makes us always think of books....

Day #4: Books and Bites
Menu: lollipops, porcupine, rainbow popcorn, popsicles, and pancakes.

Our first book was The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.
In this story the caterpillar eats a lollipop so we made some!

We unwrapped jolly ranchers and baked them in the toaster oven.


They came out a little wonky shaped but the kids seemed to enjoy them.

Next we read Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister and made rainbow popcorn.

We used my popcorn maker to make fresh popcorn, the kids had fun watching them pop!


We boiled some butter, corn syrup, and jello powder to make the rainbow syrup.

Covered the popcorn in it and baked it for 10 minutes.

We made other flavors but apparently I forgot to take pictures, I may or may not have been snacking while baking!

We read a book called A Porcupine named Fluffy for our next recipe.
We made this guy out of butter, oats, butterscotch chips, and cocoa.
The kids had fun making the quills out of pretzels and marshmallows.
I will say that he turned out pretty cute but wasn't the best tasting item of the week.

We did our popsicles differently each week of camp. For the first week we used my zoku popsicle maker. It is amazing but only makes two at a time so it was a challenge to make them for a big group of kids.

We made strawberry short pops which had pudding, strawberry puree, and pieces of pound cake.


 For the second week we wend old school and made the popsicles in paper cups to save time.





We also made delicious pancakes and read If You Give a Pig a Pancake but I was too busy eating my blueberry pancakes to document.

Overall it was a great year of cooking camp with sweet kids. It was so fun to see them try new things and be creative. We sent each kid home with a cookbook full of our recipes!

I go back to work in 3 days and lets just say I am overwhelmed. I am off to watch the olympics and work on school stuff!