Category: Food For Thought; A Snack Series Weekly Inquiry

For the first week of my Free Inquiry Project, it lined up perfectly with my friend Macie’s 24th birthday! So I didn’t really have to think much about what I was going to make… or so I thought. I thought making birthday cupcakes was going to be easy, but when they have to be gluten free and something that everyone will hopefully like, it actually proved to be more of a challenge than I thought.

Macie is celiac, and to my surprise, so are three other classmates, so it just made sense to make this week all gluten free since they were for Macie anyway. My plan was to make Macie 4 regular sized cupcakes for her birthday, and then make mini cupcakes for my classmates… not because I don’t like them as much as Macie but because I realized that this inquiry project in itself is going to be more expensive than I thought, so mini cupcakes seemed like the right move. So I made my way over to my BFF Pinterest to find some ideas. The nice thing about Pinterest is that when you search for something specific, it comes up with similar recipes to the algorithm that it thinks I would like, so the possibilities were truly endless.

I was a bit nervous going into the first week of this project with a fully gluten free recipe. I have baked gluten free items before, but I am not the most confident…. My first critic was my dad. He had been watching me make them all night and I knew I had to save one for him. At first I didn’t tell him they were gluten free because I had a feeling he would rate it differently because of it. He took one bite and he told me they were the best cupcakes he has ever had. And sometimes, he doesn’t have the nicest things to say, so I was completely shocked. He ate the whole thing within seconds before I even had the chance to tell him they were gluten free. He said he couldn’t even tell. HUGE win for me. Made me feel really confident sharing them with my friends. He also said the frosting was some of the best he has ever had. I was a bit selfish in the fact that I really do not like most cake frosting- buttercream being my least favourite, so I searched the internet for other kinds and I ended up mixing 2 recipes together and to be honest with you, it was some of the best frosting I have ever had- I am impressed with myself. It was a combination of whipped cream cheese frosting and vanilla bean frosting. I definitely will be making it again!

I am sharing my snacks with my ED-D 408 Prosocial Behaviour class on Tuesday mornings at 8:30am. It’s kind of funny because there are some people in that class that I still don’t know because they are from the other cohort, but they are quite happy to indulge in my snack series, so it is what it is. I wasn’t really sure how to get feedback at first. Do I print out a small form for each person to fill out? Do I just get them to verbally tell me and I write it down? This first one was awkward because I hadn’t figured it out, until one of my friends suggested a google form to drop into the discord for everyone to fill out when they had the chance, so that is what I will do next time!

Some of the comments I got from this weeks snack:

⭐️Cupcake is moist- slightly grainy from being gluten free but good and the icing is good⭐️

⭐️ 9/10 because some parts tasted a bit floury- maybe because of the gluten free flour?⭐️

⭐️ I don’t usually like cupcakes, but I really liked these ones⭐️

⭐️Icing was light and delicious, some of the best icing I have ever had ⭐️

⭐️SOOOO GOOOOD⭐️

Overall, I am quite pleased with this week’s edition of Food For Thought; A Snack Series. Come back next week to find out what I make next!

Have you ever thought about what happens when learning leaves the classroom and enters the kitchen? Well… that is what we are going to find out!

Originally, this inquiry project was going to be a mix of both cooking and baking, and trying out new techniques however, the more I thought about it, the more I thought about how great it would be if I didn’t have an hour and a half travel time between home and campus. If my commute was much shorter, keeping things hot or fresh would be easy- but being so far away, I can’t really do that.. and I don’t really think that heating things up the microwave is the best idea either. So, I had to change my ideas a little bit. I decided to choose strictly baking, as most things (or at least the items I am going to make) do not require heating up or to be hot at all. But the foundations of the project remain the same: each will, I will bake something new. Something that I have never made before in hopes to keep the process exciting, unpredictable, and most definitely messy. The finished product will then be shared with my classmates, who will bravely taste-test my creations and participate in a short survey about their experiences.

This project isn’t really just about whether the things I make taste good (though that definitely is the main thing I care about). It’s about curiosity, risk-taking, reflection, and learning through doing. By documenting my process, both successes and failures, and getting feedback from others, I hope to learn something about myself and my baking abilities.

Ever since I found out what Pinterest was, it has been my go-to for recipes. There are millions of different recipes out there, and Pinterest creates an algorithm based on what I search for, what recipes I make or look at in depth, and with that algorithm, I often times get lost down a rabbit hole of all of these delicious treats I want to make someday. So I immediately went there for some ideas. I want to make something significantly different each week so that I can expand my horizons beyond simple cookies or cakes. I have create a Pinterest Board called : Inquiry Project, where I have been saving recipes that could work for this project. Just because I save them, does not necessarily mean that I will use them, but they are there just in case. You can find my Pinterest Board here.

Sometimes things will turn out exactly as planned. Other times… not so much. Either way, there will be learning, and lots of snacks 🙂

I asked ChatGBT to create an image that could be the face of my project;