Some days it's the basics of vegan baking, some days are for learning knife skills, and just once each year, before winter break each year, it's all about the Gingerbread. That's right, the annual Holiday Party.
As per tradition, in the week leading up to the party, Brainfood students prepped a few of their favorite appetizers, Sweet Potato Biscuits with Maple Butter, Salsa, Pita Chips, Crudites, and Hummus for friends and family to enjoy. They also put together an excellent sugar cookie dough that we used for our decorated holiday cookies. While each class individually prepped the foods for our holiday fete, the party was the first time that all 5 Brainfood classes would be gathered (in force) at the same event. If you're mentally tallying Brainfood classes and coming up 1 short: we added a !NEW! Fridays at Brainfood class just this fall to accommodate more students.
With students calling the shots on party foods, Amy and I took on the challenge of building the Mother Ship of all gingerbread houses for students to decorate and donate to N St. Village as a holiday showpiece. I had the brilliant idea of making it "really really big". Amy had the brilliant idea of making the gingerbread from scratch. And clearly brilliant plus brilliant equals... an unprecedented late night in the Chinatown kitchen, sketching templates for house walls out of parchment paper, rolling out massive amounts of dough, cutting out the house "pieces" with pizza cutters, and marveling at our relative naivete regarding gingerbread mega-projects.
