My Route to Perfectly Baked Profiteroles

About a week ago I have posted about my unsuccessful attempt to bake profiteroles. In the post I mentioned that I will strive to achieve perfectly baked profiteroles until the end of 2012.

I have attempted to bake these three times since then and today, on 31st of December, I have finally achieved my goal. To be honest I was very surprised with my patience each time I took out trays of flat dough but I never stopped: I continued altering the recipe a little, or using a completely different one, experimenting with temperatures and proportions.

I am a huge follower of Gordon Ramsay's work and I have no idea why I haven't thought about it earlier but today I have decided to follow his profiteroles' recipe to bake mine. With the help of master chef I was able to bake today's profiteroles and achieve my target.

This is the link to his recipe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCeiz0PdGls

Overall on my route to success I have used 3 different recipes and wasted:

- 700 ml of water
- 525 ml of milk
- 850 grams of butter
- 17 eggs
- 800 grams of flour
- 1450 ml of whipped cream
- 10 pods of vanilla

- 10 hours of personal time

However, every time I repeated the recipe I have:

- developed new skills
- increased awareness of strengths and weaknesses
- shown perseverance and commitment to cookery 

New Action Activity - Gym

A couple of weeks ago I have posted an update about the fact that my dissatisfaction with my coach's attitude made me drop my tennis class. In search of a new action activity I have found out that there was a fitness club in 20 mins walking distance from my apartment block. I have never gone to any fitness center on a regular basis but a little bit of independent research as well as talking to the managers of the club convinced me that I should try that out. Consequently I asked my parents to gift me a full year membership at Kimberly Land fitness center for New Year. 

My parents decided to surprise me and give it to me earlier i.e today. I did not hesitate with my first visit. 

During today's gym session I have ran 2 km on a treadmill which may not be too impressive but I think it's a good start for a person who doesn't do much jogging in her everyday life. I have also done regular aerobics for 50 mins using offered equipment such as exercise mats, weighted hula hoops and toning bars. I finished the session off with some stretching yoga asanas. 

 

My thoughts of this experience are nothing but positive. I feel like this activity could increase my overall stamina greatly and may potentially give me a future opportunity to improve from my current results. I will definitely maintain this activity. 

CAS Objectives targeted:

- undertaking new challenges

- increasing awareness of strengths and areas for growth

- planning and initiating activities 

- developing new skills   

My Failure in Baking Profiteroles

Today I have been baking profiteroles. At least attempted to do so but failed miserably. I was watching a cooking program on the television and they were making these so I thought that since I already have some experience with baking eclairs, profiteroles should be an easy one for me.

Little did I know that baking profiteroles something is that truly requires full attention to proportions, temperatures and ingredients.

I can not recall the original recipe but let's just say I went slightly off it here and there (6 eggs instead of 8, somewhere in between 200 and 250 grams of flour in place of desired 150 grams and so on). Not surprisingly I ended up wasting all of the ingredients because my profiteroles turned out to be insipid. Further more the dough didn't rise and I took them out of the oven looking so flat that there was no way I could pump them up with custardy.

I feel like this unfortunate experience reminded me that no matter what you do you have to put your heart into it, metaphorically speaking of course. Especially when it comes to cookery.

I have set myself a goal to repeat the recipe however many time it takes to get the perfect profiteroles until the end of 2012. I will be keeping posts coming about that.

By baking profiteroles, even though unsuccessfully, I have:

- increased awareness of my strengths and weaknesses
- undertaken new challenges
- shown perseverance and commitment to cookery
- set myself targets that I intend to achieve in a limited time period 

Bake sale in BISM 3

Today along with several others I have held a bake sale at our school. Yesterday I have gotten together with my sister (http://polinasemochkinacasblog.blogspot.ru) and Natasha (http://nataliaivanovacasmoscow.blogspot.ru) and working collaboratively with them we have baked muffins, biscuits, cheese cake and a pudding. We have also chosen Guzal', a young beautiful girl with vascular malformation to help with the fund that the we would raise from selling our pastries.

Guzal'.

The sale was a success. The demand was high and absolutely everything that we have baked was sold out. To watch the video from the sale please proceed to Polina's CAS blog: http://polinasemochkinacasblog.blogspot.ru .
As far as I'm concerned we have raised as much as 8000 rubles. We also got several positive feedbacks from our consumers. It feels amazing to know that the efforts put into cooking were granted and that the money raised from the sale would contribute towards changing Guzal's life to the better. Natasha volunteered to be responsible for cash transfer for Guzal' medical treatment and here you may see the proof of our donation being transferred for a genuinely good cause.

Feedback.

CAS Objectives:
- increasing awareness of strengths and area for improvement
- undertaking new challenges
- planning and initiating activities
- working collaboratively with others
- engaging with issues of global importance
- considering ethical implications of my actions

All-planned-by-me Tutoring session

Last Thursday I have posted about my plans to fully organize one of our Russian language lessons with Mme Merlet. I haven't changed my mind about that and today I have done a fully organized lesson for her.

I have spent my entire Wednesday evening thinking about what I could do to teach russian in a engaging and interesting way. I have then decided that I would have an interactive discussion with my "student" based on a rather controversial image of kids playing in the street. I was glad to realize that Mme Merlet was enjoying this activity and was attempting to suggest well balanced arguments about the context of the image and the sociological views on the issue of poverty.

I have asked Mme Merlet to give me some reflection on the past lesson and she confidently said that she liked it and would like to give me another opportunity to plan our first lesson after the holiday. I will spend my holiday planning lessons ahead: printing out materials, researching discussion topics etc.

By systematically tutoring russian I:
- develop new skills
- increase awareness of strengths and areas for growth
- undertake new challenges
- consider ethical implications of my actions
- become a more caring, communicative and open minded IB learner.

Last Tennis Lesson with my Coach.

I have just returned from the last tennis practice that I will ever have with my current coach. I shall explain why.

I came to practice with rather positive attitude and played very well in the beginning of the practice but then out of the blue I felt like my coach wasn't putting much effort into our practices, as if he wasn't enjoying practiced with me at all. It's hard to explain but I got a little bit upset by this and told my coach I won't be training with him anymore. I might have made a mistake by doing so. Nonetheless I am currently on the fence about whether I should look for another coach or get a membership in a fitness club instead in order to satisfy the action aspect of CAS as well as to stay in shape. 

Nevertheless I have gone to my practice today and I believe that by doing so I have:

- developed new skills

- increased awareness of my attitude towards tennis

- shown perseverance and commitment to my activity

Reading Russian Detective Novels with French teacher.

Last thursday, it slipped my mind to make a post about the latest progress that Mme Merlet has been making in Russian. Together with her, we have been reading a detective novel by a famous russian writer Boris Akunin named "Azazel'.

Unfortunately we did not have time to finish the whole novel because Mme Merlet preferred to move on to doing something different this week however I got very intrigued by the novel's plot and will most likely continue reading it at home. I was impressed with Mme Merlet's reading skills and I am very proud and pleased with her progress so far. I feel like by occasionally helping her with her learning of Russian, I am also making her life in Moscow much easier because she is now able to talk about basic things fluently and I know a lot of teachers in our school struggle with that.

After our last teaching session Mme Merlet asked me to prepare something of my choice for us to study this week. I have found a picture of three colored skin children playing in the street for us to talk about. I hope this will provoke some discussion for us and encourage Mme Merlet to think outside of the box and to attempt explaining more complex thought in Russian. We will see how that'll go on thursday.

I believe that by tutoring I:

- am being caring, open minded and reflective
- increase awareness of my strengths and areas for growth
- plan and initiate an activity
- show perseverance and commitment to my activity
- consider ethical implication of my actions

Feeding Stray Dogs.

Yesterday we had a family dinner and my mother had roasted a goose. In the end of the evening we were left with a huge goose bone which would usually be thrown away with the rest of the rubbish. However I came up with an idea of feeding it to starving stray dogs outside. I love animals in general and helping a group of them nearby my apartment block was a real pleasure for me. 

Unfortunately I did not manage to take any pictures of the dogs since I thoughtlessly left my phone at home on my way outside. However I managed to get a picture of the actual bone that was fed to the dogs and I am sharing it with you. 

CAS outcomes met: 

• considering ethical implications of my actions
• engaging with issues of global importance