Progress Report

My in-depth project this year is baking. Currently, I have had two meetings with my mentor through zoom calls. In our first meeting, my mentor and I discussed what my goals were, what I wanted to bake, and a general outline of what I wanted to do and achieve. In our second meeting, we decided that I was going to try making a strawberry roll cake, as it was not a very difficult item to bake. She gave me instructions, tips, and techniques while I baked. Through this second meeting, I learned a lot about how important techniques were. For example, if you are trying to get a fluffy texture in your bread, instead just craking your egg in one bowl and mixing it, you need to “separate the yolk and the whites and whisk them separately”. This will ensure that once you mix the pre-whisked yolk and the whites with the rest of the ingredients, there will be lots of small air bubbles which will keep your ‘bread’ part of the cake nice and fluffy. Another technique I learned was “if [I] want[ed]to make [my] cake dense and heavy, [I] should mix [my] ingredients with an electronic mixer” but if I want to keep my cake light and fluffy, I should “mix softly with a spatula, as it will keep the air bubbles intact in the mixture”.

Below are photos I took during the process of making the roll cake.

Adding strawberries on the roll cake

A piece of my finished strawberry roll cake. Yummy!

How To Have A Beautiful Mind

Agreeing

During the two meetings I’ve had with my mentor, I’ve found it hard to not agree with anything she said. I think the reason for this was that first of all, she knows about baking way more than I do, and second of all, I was the one who asked her if she could spend her free time teaching me how to bake, so it didn’t feel right to do disagree with her. A good example of when I used the concepts from this chapter was for the first meeting I had with her, which was when we planned how we wanted everything to flow. When we were talking about what I wanted to try and bake for the next meeting, originally I had in mind that I wanted to try and make brownies, as they are one of my favorite treats. Before I could tell her, she gave me a suggestion of baking a strawberry roll cake. She explained how it was one of the most simple bakery items to bake, and that it applied techniques that would be very beneficial for baking in general. Before she explained what she wanted for me to bake on my next meeting with her, I never would have thought of baking a roll cake, but after she explained why she recommends me to start with roll cakes, I agreed as I realized that it would help me advance my baking skills. Through agreeing with her, I was able to gain useful knowledge on baking techniques that I could use for harder bakery items.

Disagreeing

This chapter gave advice such as not disagreeing just for the sake of disagreeing, as well as always giving a reason behind your different views. Like I stated above, my mentor and I had close to no disagreements about anything. When we were figuring out what dates would work for us for our meetings, we were both free on Tuesdays. When we were deciding what I was going to bake, I agreed with all the recommendations as it made sense. As you can see, there was not much we could disagree about. The closest we’ve had to a disagreement would be when she was a little late sending me the criminal record check. A week had passed from when I needed to hand the criminal record check in, but there were no emails or messages talking about completing the crim check. I knew that she probably had other things she had to do, but I needed to figure out a way to let her know without sounding rude or obnoxious, as this chapter said to always be polite when disagreeing, and also you should just always be polite. I wrote her an email about the crim check, but I made sure to not include that she was already a week late, as it would only make her feel bad. I hope to not break this streak and not have any big disagreements throughout in-depth.

Differing

This chapter talks about how different points of view and life situations will create varying opinions, and often the best way to handle a situation is to try to find a middle ground. An example of when I used the concepts from this chapter was when we were deciding what I wanted to do for my final project at the end of in-depth. We both talked about how we wanted it to look like, and although at first, we had different ideas of how we wanted it to look like, eventually we found a middle ground including both my ideas and her ideas. 

Although this is only my second in-depth post, I have learned a lot and improved my techniques and skills. I hope to learn even more during my next meetings. See you in my next in-depth post!