I Got To Be A Teacher for Night

Take a look at this!  See how pretty they made my sprinkles look?  I could never do that.

   Back in college we would sit through live cooking demos every other day, then the next day we would do the cooking ourselves.  It was kind of neat, you had the chef at the head of the class doing his thing, with this huge mirror over him so you could see what his hands were doing.  Each student got to help out now and then, I liked it, but I hated being in front of people.  Even people I knew.  So I knew I would never be a celebrity chef, unless they make drugs that make you not nervous, and if they do let me know.

I had to wear my cupcake apron of course.  I mean how can you teach without it?

And look at the size of that mixer, I made one huge batch of butter cream for the class, and I think I want one!  But in a pretty colour.

These boys were hilarious, and one of them may have used his cupcakes to ask his date to prom. 

  But when I found an ad on the local Craigslist type site asking for a volunteer chef to teach kids to cook for charity I was all "I can do that and it would be good Karma for charity and I could have Pork Chop and my mom help out!"

 So I emailed the person saying I was not a chef, because I never got all my hours in or wrote my papers.  I told them that I was a culinary graduate and had a baking blog, lame as it is, and that if I could I would love to help out.  The person sent me a note saying she would love my help, but since the class would be for kids, she did not think my box mix recipes would be the best idea.  Ouch, but really it's true, I love me a box mix.  I told her no worries we can do from scratch no problems and that she could let me know when she needed me.  Then I told my mom and said she could help me and watch Pork Chop.  She said no, because she said I would make fun of her.

Pork Chop is wearing my Robin Hood flour apron that my mom got for me and one for my sister when we were little.  It is so cute, and he loves using it. I should have made him wear the matching chef hat, that would have been great.

And Pork Chop was showing  off, as usual, and I was all "shh, I am teaching!"  And then he gave me the "your pathetic."  Look, or it was the "are you kidding me, I am the star!" Look, I can never tell with him.

There was icing sugar every where, just like at my house.  

  She knows me too well, but I promised not to bring up the fact she thought a Blog was actually called a Blob, and nothing at all about that one time she made a dessert so bad that everyone that had it put holes in their paper plates trying to cut it.  I would never expose those deep dark secrets to the world.  And if you are actually reading this mom, I am not making fun of you, I am pointing out how much I love you and your support.  I swear.

  So as it turns out this class was going to take place when my mom was on the other side of the world, which just figures.  So Hubby it was, and he was all, "no way!" and I was all, "yes way!"  And he did it and was great, and that is all.

This little girl was so cute, and see how she is holding the bag?  Well we did not tie the bag so there was a near icing disaster.

  So we decided that we were going to make cupcakes and I was going to teach them how to decorate with butter cream and fondant.  But since it was only a two hour class we had some work to do.  Firstly the cupcakes were made for the class before hand, and I was just going to demo how to make them. I was also going to show how to make butter cream and level and frost a cake.

Mom to the rescue of course.

We ran out of room and had to have people working on the front counter. The school we were in was great, this was a full teaching kitchen. I just imagine what I could do with a kitchen this big!

  For the class Pork Chop wanted to be in charge, and kept getting mad at me that I did not have jobs for him to do, so that was fun.  But during the lesson he got to show how to crack an egg properly and he decorated his own cupcakes.  There were even some deaf people and an interpreter, which was cool.  But it threw me off as she stood beside me to sign and I kept thinking "Oh my gosh, I am rambling and making no sense and this poor girl is trying to figure out how to sign the word fondant and I am going to pass out"  It was different I tells ya.

This was the grandma, and she got in trouble for not listening and just doing her own thing.  Not from me, I was laughing. 

  So I think it went really well, after the cupcakes were in the oven we got to decorating with some fondant and it was so fun to see how excited everyone was getting making their own little things, using all my tools and what not.  I then demonstrated how to decorate and fill a cake.  And my stupid butter cream was all airy so it was not a nice smooth finish, but you know, it could have been worse.

And here I am talking like I know what I am talking about.  I felt so dorky.

Everyone seemed to be having fun, especially that guy yelling at the back. Or is he yawning, that would be the opposite of having fun right?

More sprinkles!

This was one of the cupcake toppers I made.

Not sure why I wanted all these sprinkle pictures, but it may have something to do with Hubby not allowing me to add to my wall o' sprinkles.  

He can be so selfish some times.

  I think the best part was when I showed them all the edible image I made for the cake, and the toppers I made for the cupcakes.  They didn't seem to grasp that is was icing paper, so Pork Chop actually ate some to show them, they were still shocked I think.  So funny!

You can see me and hubby in the back ground.  Pork Chop was busy decorating his own cupcakes.

  So then I walked around and helped the kids and they did a great job, and I liked sharing something new with them.  Growing up my mom taught my sister and I so much.  Like how to bake, cook, sew, knit and clean.  The cleaning obviously never stuck with me, but the rest, I embraced. And I love when kids are excited about learning and I can help.

And these are some of the finished products.  You can obviously see my butt on the left, but it is partially blocked, so it doesn't look too big. Sort of.

I hope she said yes.  Or at least ate one of them.

  So the charity I was helping out was called Free The Children.  And this event helped to raise money so that the young girl setting it up would be able to travel to help children in other parts of the world.  I think she is even going to be helping in building a school, so wow!  Making cupcakes is nothing compared to that, but I felt good knowing I could help out in some way.

 I would like to do something like this again, but maybe with some good calming drugs, or lots of booze.  I'm not picky.

I found a link to the news paper article that was written Here and if you are interested in learning more about Nicole and what this is all about you can check out her blog Here.