Nothing like having grading to do to make me catch up on blog posts... So I decided to have my students over to my house for movie nights over the course of 4 sessions so that my 36 students were broken down into reasonably sized groups (and by sex, no hanky-panky in my house thank you). I realized afterward that this is actually a quasi educational event since the movies are in English, with the bonus challenge of no subtitles because we can't find the remote for our dvd player. Anyway, I just thought it would be a nice thing to do, especially for the handful of students who are away from home (and can you imagine, at the age of 13/14?!), to make them feel special and liked. I also wanted an excuse to make them some treats. So I had the first group of girls over a couple weeks ago, and I had chips, popcorn, carrots, apples, pretzels from the store and made SK's thick chewy oatmeal cookies and SK's everyday chocolate cake. The girls really enjoyed it and were really cute about it. My roommates were impressed, I think, at how adorable and quiet they are. The girls in my class are all just incredibly sweet. I love the boys too, but they are a bit of a different animal. I am slightly nervous about those nights, but I asked Rob, one of the other ESL teachers, to chaperone it with me, and having an adult male influence is definitely easing my mind a bit about handling them. Anyway, all my students are wonderful and I really enjoy them.
Speaking of the cookies and cake, I made a couple mistakes. First, I was talking to my stepdad on skype while making the cookies and miscalculated the conversion from English to metric for grams for butter and so they had half the butter that the recipe called for. I noticed that they were a bit off but I couldn't figure out what I did wrong until well after the first batch was in the oven. They weren't as delicious as they had been in the past, but I was still pleased with them. The cake is sort of a long process, largely because of the baking time (compared to movie length) of 45-60 minutes, and so I didn't really let it cool because I wanted to serve it right when the movie ended and then get the girls home (it was only 6 pm but I didn't want it to be a long event). It sort of fell apart, which led to me dumping piles of chocolately crumbs on my girls' napkins. At the end of the day, it worked out because it got them all laughing at me and I think they enjoyed seeing me being silly in my domestic environment (vs. frequently seeing me being silly at work). I am having another movie night tomorrow with the second girls group, and I picked out a different recipe to use to make little chocolate cake muffins. My fingers are crossed and my camera is ready.
Chocolate Cake:
1/2 cup (1 stick or 4 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup (6 7/8 ounces) firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup (4 ounces) granulated sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups (6 3/4 ounces) all-purpose flour
3/4 cup (2 5/8 ounces) Dutch cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
Preheat the oven to 325°F. Butter and lightly flour a 9×5x3-inch loaf pan, or spray it with a butter-flour spray. In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugars and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the egg and beat well, then the buttermilk and vanilla. Don’t worry if the batter looks a little uneven. Sift the flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt together right into your wet ingredients. Stir together with a spoon until well-blended but do not overmix. Scrape down the batter in the bowl, making sure the ingredients are well blended.
Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan. Bake for 60 to 70 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. Cool in pan on a rack for about 10 to 15 minutes, at which point you can cool it the rest of the way out of the pan.
Oatmeal Raisin Cookies:
1/2 cup (1 stick or 4 ounces) butter, softened
2/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt (I often use a half teaspoon, but I like more salt in my baked goods)
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
3/4 cup raisins
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped (optional)
Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, egg and vanilla until smooth. In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt together. Stir this into the butter/sugar mixture. Stir in the oats, raisins and walnuts, if using them.
At this point you can either chill the dough for a bit in the fridge and then scoop it, or scoop the cookies onto a sheet and then chill the whole tray before baking them. You could also bake them right away, if you’re impatient, but I do find that they end up slighly less thick.
The cookies should be two inches apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake them for 10 to 12 minutes (your baking time will vary, depending on your oven and how cold the cookies were going in), taking them out when golden at the edges but still a little undercooked-looking on top. Let them sit on the hot baking sheet for five minutes before transferring them to a rack to cool.
Pictures of my not-quite-right recipe :)
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