LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process
Since we currently have to follow circuit breaker measures, we do not eat outside and we rarely take away food, therefore I thought it would be a good idea to try cooking at home. I rarely make food unless it is on special occasions such as someone’s birthday, however even then I usually am working with the assistance of my mom. As I am not very experienced, I decided to firstly start of simple and make pancakes because I have tried doing so in the past. I thought I was going to have trouble flipping over my pancakes or letting it cook for too long, but I managed to stay focused and the outcome was satisfactory. After cooking pancakes several times, I began to feel more confident and decided to push myself the next time I was cooking. So the next time, I decided to create crepe’s from the pancake batter as well, by adding more milk to the mixture to obtain a thinner texture. However, there were several challenges I encountered. Firstly, it was difficult to find a right balance for the mixture to be thin enough to spread across the pan, but not too thin that it would fall apart when I flipped it. Secondly, when I first poured the batter onto the pan, I didn’t realise how fast it would start cooking since the texture was not as thick as that of a pancake. Furthermore, sometimes I would not pour the batter in evenly, therefore some parts would start to cook faster than the other, making it difficult to judge when would be the right time to turn it over. In addition, it was more difficult to flip not only because the crepe was bigger in size, but also because it would stick to the pan (even though I was using a non-stick fry pan and also smoothed out a little bit of oil on the pan before starting), therefore I was essentially scraping it off the pan, which resulted in an unpleasant mess. Another thing I found quite challenging was trying to re-wet the towel for the pan before cooking the next crepe, while also keeping an eye on the current crepe that was cooking because as I mentioned before the crepe would cook quite fast. Despite facing these difficulties that influenced the outcome of my crepes, I decided to be a little bit creative and cut of the parts of the crepe that were unpleasant-looking and rolled them up with Nutella in between (almost like a rolled up ice-cream), so that way I would not be wasting any food, while also displaying my food in an aesthetic manner. From this entire process, I have been able to improve my cognitive skills by following the recipe, yet also encouraged space for creativity as I adjusted the amount of milk for the crepe and furthermore, thought of a way to incorporate parts of the crepe that would have gone to waste. I believe overall, cooking pancakes and crepes was a nice way to try something new, develop skills, and minimise screen time.
