Making modeling chocolate

We made modeling chocolate a long time ago and had enough fun to try it again. I can't say it tastes very good, honestly. The linked post talks about how much better it is than fondant, but that is a low, low bar. We also had a little trouble not having it get all sticky after a while. You do need to keep it coldish…but not too cold. Maybe we'd be able to get it more exactly right after a few tries? It was a fun way to work with chocolate, anyway. I especially think the white chocolate in pastel colors is pretty for cake decorating!  

Here's the recipe from King Arthur Flour:

Dark modeling chocolate

1 1/3 cups (227 g) chopped semisweet chocolate (not chips)

1/3 cup (103g) light corn syrup

White modeling chocolate

1 1/3 cups (227g) chopped white chocolate (not chips)

1/3 cup (103g) light corn syrup

1. In a heatproof bowl set over simmering water (or in a double boiler), melt the chocolate. Stir constantly until melted; don’t let its temperature rise above 110°F. Remove from the heat.

2. Warm the corn syrup to 110°F, add to the melted chocolate, and stir until the mixture is uniform. It will look grainy at first but smooth out as you keep stirring.

3. Allow the mixture to cool, then cover and let rest at room temperature for 2 hours. It will set up and become quite stiff.

4. When you’re ready to use it, take a chunk and work it in your hands until it softens. From this point you can tint it with gel colors, roll it out and cut it with decorative cutters, or shape it any way you choose, like modeling clay; the chocolate will set once more as it cools.

Chocolate Gnomie

Tiny police car Junie made for Ziggy

Tiny chocolate rose

Chocolate Bendigo??!

I made cupcakes and said each person could decorate two of them however he or she pleased. (Some children did more.) These were my two! Simple.

I loved these rose ones!

Cute nature themes

Junie's fish and pig

Gus's chocolate Caw

Ziggy's dots and police car

I'm actually not sure what this one is. A penguin next to a duck? A penguin in a canoe? A Caw in a bird airplane?

Daisy's cupcakes

Ace of Clubs cupcake Daisy made for Malachi

Teddy's witch hat and…Eiffel Tower?? Trumpet?

Goldie's bunny with egg and beautiful pink roses (with butterfly). So pretty!

And here they all are together. They do look very pretty!

Ancient Phoenicians and glassmaking

I didn't really know anything about the Phoenicians before this unit. We learned about two things they're famous for, their glassmaking and their purple dye (Phoenician purple or Tyrian purple)! 

I had heard, of course, about purple being the color of kings, and I knew the dye for it was really expensive. But I didn't know WHY. This article shows a man who has revived the ancient technique—which involves murex snail shells in HUGE quantities, extracting their glands, fermenting them, letting them sit in the sun for a little while but not too long, cooking them, etc.—and now I finally understand! https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/oddly-enough/tunisian-enthusiast-recreates-sea-snail-purple-dye-that-defined-ancient-royals-2022-02-08/

I also didn't know how beautiful the purple color was. You can see why it was so loved!

This picture is from that man's Facebook page—it's cool to look at his pictures and see the bottles of beautiful powdered dye, etc. That article says that it takes 119  pounds of murex shells to produce a single gram of Tyrian purple!!

The other thing the Phoenicians were famous for was glassmaking. I love glassmaking (the Museum of Glass is one of my favorite museums we've ever visited!), but didn't know anywhere local we could go to watch it. So we just watched a bunch of videos.

This one is really interesting because it shows the technique the Phoenicians used—core-formed glass. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBZb2bkn4KU

This just shows the making of a glass pitcher (not core-formed) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtxrtKd-Vao

This video, "Glass skills with Bill," shows how to use honey to practice the rolling technique of keeping molten glass on your rod. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz1sUH7wDvA&t=2s 

And that gave me an idea! The honey reminded me of melted sugar, or caramel. I wondered if we could use hot caramel to mimic molten glass and try some of the glassmaking techniques! Then I found a recipe for sugar glass and that seemed like it would be perfect! This is the glass they use in movies when someone has to crash through a window or something. It breaks just like glass, but without the cost (and it's not quite as sharp, so less likely to cause injury).

We tried this recipe: https://www.inthekitchenwithmatt.com/edible-sugar-glass and it was a great success! I had just been hoping to move and mold the "glass" around a little, but Daisy had the idea of trying to actually blow it with metal straws, and it worked! I couldn't believe it! The blown "glass" doesn't hold its shape; it collapses almost immediately, but we made a few balls and bubbles with it and it definitely got the idea across. Very, very fun. 

You have to be careful, because it's very hot, of course, but this was one of our favorite projects during this unit!

This is cool too—Sugar stained glass https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt8PhT-DMyE&t=45s

A little handle, like you'd make on a glass pitcher

Sugar-glass bubble! This one was actually thick enough to last. It finally shattered when we poked it—it looked so cool!

Thinner glass bubbles that shrunk into themselves as soon as the girls stopped blowing

A beautiful sheet of sugar glass! The Phoenicians would have been proud.

History of Flight, and Angel Food Cake with Pink Clouds

There are so many cool elements of the history of aviation! All the way from Icarus to Chinese kites to hot air balloons to the Wright Brothers to Amelia Earhart. There is a good overview here, but I think the best way to learn about it is just to get books and books and books from the library. There are SO many good ones! About all kinds of different aviators and all kinds of different flying machines.

We had previously learned about hot air balloons, which are a fascinating subject all by themselves. It would be fun to do some of those activities when talking about the history of flight. There are probably also some activities from our Bird Unit that would apply.

This was a funny video showing some flying machines that didn't work so well!

Here's a clip of the Wright Brothers flying their plane!

The children, even the older ones, had a lot of fun doing some of these historical aircraft dot-to-dots.

We watched this interesting documentary about Amelia Earhart's disappearance.

One of the books we read was called Eleanor and Amelia Go for a Ride, based on a true event where Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt flew together on a plane. There was a recipe at the end for "Eleanor Roosevelt's Angel Food Cake with Pink Clouds." An appropriately aero-centric treat! :) We made something similar, but I used my tried-and-true angel food cake recipe. The "pink clouds" are just blended up strawberries, folded into whipped cream. It was SO good!

Here's the recipe:

Angel Food Cake with Pink Clouds

1 1/2 c. egg whites (10-12), at room temperature
1 1/2 c. sugar, divided
1 c. sifted cake flour
1 tsp. cream of tartar
1/4 t. salt
2 tsp. vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
1/2 t. almond extract

In a small bowl, whisk together 3/4 c. sugar and cake flour. Set aside.

Beat egg whites in stand mixer until frothy, then add cream of tartar and salt. Beat until fully mixed, and then add the remaining 3/4 c. sugar, 1-2 T. at a time. When sugar has been added, beat egg whites to soft peaks. (They will look like soft waves, and when you lift the beaters, the egg whites will droop back down into the batter---not fall down in ribbons.) Once you have soft peaks, add vanilla and almond and beat for a few seconds to distribute.

Sift the flour/sugar mixture over the egg whites in 6-8 additions and gently fold it in after each addition. Do it with a spatula and be very slow and gentle so as not to deflate the eggs.

Spoon batter into a 9-inch tube pan with a removeable bottom. Smooth the top with a spatula and bake in the lowest half of the oven, at 325 for 55-60 minutes.

Remove from oven, invert pan over a bottle, and allow to cool completely. Gently run a thin knife around the sides, then around the bottom, of the pan to release the cake when you are ready to serve it. Slice with a serrated bread knife, and serve with berries, "pink clouds" or lemon curd.

"Pink Clouds":

Blend 6-8 strawberries, fresh or frozen, to make a thin berry sauce. Fold sauce into freshly whipped cream.

Oh—also—we saw this IMAX movie about the history of flight. And it was good. We wish there had been more planes in it, though. (There was lots of just scenery. Beautiful, but the airplanes were cooler.) The part that showed a bouquet of roses, making their way from Africa (or Ecuador? or somewhere) on various planes to finally end up on someone's bedside table in Alaska was our favorite part. We loved seeing that truly miraculous journey with new eyes.

Japanese food: gyoza, tempura; "Kawaii cooking;" teppanyaki-style food

One night we decided to try making gyoza, which are the Japanese version of potstickers. We LOVE to eat potstickers, so we were pretty sure we'd like making them too.

I adapted this pork gyoza recipe, but now that I've made them once, I think it would be pretty easy to make up our own filling using cabbage and other vegetables, or adding some other type of meat. Apparently even the restaurants in Japan don't usually make their own wrappers, so we bought some of the round pre-made wrappers at the store and that made it easy. It always takes a while to fill so many little dumplings, but it's fun to do, and we got the hang of the pleating pretty well after a while. They turned out really quite delicious.

Our very favorite thing about studying Japanese food (besides eating it) was when we learned about the sampuru, or plastic food samples, often used in Japanese restaurants. These food samples are so realistic and delicious-looking that Japan is famous for them! I've even seen them at a ramen restaurant we went to in California one time. There is a cool introduction to the food samples here, and also a fascinating video here. You have GOT to watch the man form cabbage by dropping sheets of warm wax into water, and then folding it together and slicing it. It is AMAZING!

Anyway, one of the most popular food samples to make is tempura shrimp. So we decided to try making that, too. I have never shelled and de-veined shrimp before, but I asked the man at the meat counter to show me how, and he did, so now I can do it! The children helped me. We made tempura shrimp and also tempura vegetables, and everything was delicious. We used this recipe here for the batter and some miso mayonnaise dip (very yummy).

On another day, we talked about the Japanese concept of "kawaii," which basically means "cute," but has other implications as well (see a discussion of "kawaii" here). We watched some episodes of THE CUTEST YouTube show, called "Kawaii Cooking," which shows you how to make all sorts of impossibly tiny and edible things. They are adorable. Our favorite was probably this one showing tiny donuts.

While we were making gyoza, Sebastian decided he wanted to make a "kawaii gyoza." So he did:

Eeek! The tiniest!

Our own Japanese food was delicious, but I must admit it is not as good as food prepared by real Japanese chefs who know what they are doing! We got to go to a Japanese tepanyaki-style restaurant (called Bonsai Japanese Steakhouse; we recommend it; it's awesome) and we were amazed at how good everything was! 

Incidentally, lots of people (including the owners of this restaurant, so it must be acceptable) call this type of restaurant a "hibachi" steakhouse, but we learned that this isn't quite correct: a hibachi is a small grill with a grate, usually not even used for cooking in traditional Japanese homes, but just for heat. Teppanyaki is the correct name for the big griddle that they use at these places. Maybe since there's also an actual restaurant called Tepanyaki, it's just too confusing to call it that?

Anyway, Sam and I have been to a Tepanyaki and also to a Benihana (same kind of place) and we think this restaurant, Bonsai, is the best of all of them. We loved it. And of course the children loved the onion volcano and all the other antics of the chef. It was a really fun place to go (for a special occasion—it is not as expensive as Benihana, but still not cheap).

Homemade Sushi Party

Before this unit, I had only tried sushi a few times. I liked it okay, but I didn't really…get it. It seemed faintly strange to me, and I worried about the raw fish, but mostly I just didn't see what the fuss was about and I felt like maybe I was missing something.

MAKING our own sushi somehow transformed it into a food that I understood! Putting all the components together myself made me realize how many variations in taste and texture sushi can utilize, and I realized that "sushi" wasn't just one thing, but a whole class of food that could be adjusted to suit almost any taste. It just suddenly made sense. 

I think the other thing that helped me understand it was just seeing in videos how carefully and lovingly Japanese chefs prepared their sushi. I saw what an art form it was and began to appreciate the visual and creative elements. Two videos we really liked were this one on the history of sushi, and this Begin Japanology episode on sushi. And then seeing, in those same videos, people enjoying and relishing their sushi so greatly, helped me get over the hump of feeling like it was a strange food, and just feel more like, "Wow, so many people like this and think it's delicious…I want to try it too!"

Oh—and it also helped when I learned that each piece of sushi was supposed to be eaten in one bite. I can't always manage that, of course, but I think the first few times I had sushi I just felt so awkward eating it, because it fell apart or I couldn't quite get it with the chopsticks. But when I looked at each piece as an entity meant to go together, where all the flavors were supposed to join and make one multi-layered taste, I was more willing to just stuff it into my mouth and enjoy that deep blend of flavor. And not worry about if it was messy or if I looked silly. :)

The children didn't have any preconceived notions about sushi, but they loved all the other Japanese food we'd tried, and they had seen all the same videos where it was made to look so delicious, so they were all excited to try it. Their absolute favorite thing, though, was this video we watched about conveyor belt sushi restaurants in Japan. They LOVED the idea of getting your food from a conveyor belt, right at your table! It's too bad we don't have restaurants like this around here because they would have been overcome with joy to go to one.

Failing a conveyor belt restaurant, though, making our own sushi was the next best thing, because everyone could prepare theirs just as they liked it. We had our friends the Rhodes come over and help us. They had mats for us to use for rolling, and Carrie Ann brought the most beautiful platter of fillings (is that what they're called?). Mango, cucumber, carrot, lemon, lime, avocado, cilantro, cream cheese. She arranged them into darling little fish and turtle shapes, which is so Japanese in spirit. It was perfect. I got our fish, tuna and salmon, from a Market Street Grill (restaurant) and had no concerns about its quality, and once I tasted how delicious it was in the sushi, I wasn't concerned about it being raw, either. It was so great to have the Rhodes with us because they knew what they were doing, and helped show us so we could feel confident too.

The rice was easy to make. We used what was called "sushi rice" at our grocery store. Before cooking it, I made sure to rinse it several times until the water was clear, and I followed the directions on the package, which were a little different than the usual 2:1 water to rice ratio. (It was 2 cups water to 1 1/2 cups rice.) Then Carrie Ann told me to add, for every two cups of uncooked rice, add 1 T. sugar and 2 T. rice vinegar. I made two double batches of rice, one in the rice cooker and one on the stovetop, and I thought both were equally good.

So, for future reference (because we will definitely be doing this again), let me write out the recipe as I made it:

Sushi Rice

4 cups water

3 cups rice

1 1/2 T. sugar

3 T. rice vinegar

Rinse rice several times in a colander over a bowl. Then drain excess water so you're left with just rice. Place rice in rice cooker or in saucepan. Add 4 c. water to the rice. Stir in sugar and vinegar. Bring to a boil; cook, covered for 20 minutes (on stove) or as directed for rice cooker.

Malachi looks so sad, but I think he is just concentrating intently

Rolling the sushi was the best part. It was so fun to choose what combinations of things to put into your roll. I loved the salmon and the tuna, and I loved the bright flavor of the thin thin slices of lemon. Next time I want to perfect our sauces even more, but even the simple soy-sauce based sauces we made were quite good.

Todd was the best with the children. They ALL needed help at once, and he was always there to give it. Whereas I kept saying, "Just a minute, I'm making my OWN right now!"

We made some rice balls too, but I think everyone liked the sushi best. Seb arranged his plate with meticulous care, as we had learned how attentive the Japanese are to their food presentation.

Making our own sushi was also great because it allowed us to share the rolls really easily, and try a whole bunch of different combinations. There wasn't anything I didn't like. Everything was SO tasty!