Introduction to The Activity

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In about a week's time, it will be the birthday of my beloved one, and so I decided to challenge my cooking skills and abilities to plan and design, to provide a birthday surprise for her.

Focus

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Addressed Learning Outcomes:

1. Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance.
2. Identify your own strengths and develop areas for personal growth.
3. Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process.
4. Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience.
5. Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences.
6. Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions.
7. Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively.

CAS Hours

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CAS Stages

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Investigation

• Looking for a doable tutorial on Chiffon Cake on YouTube or other Chinese social media apps.
• Brush up on the skills of cooking "Tea Eggs" and learning to cook "Century Egg and Pork Congee".
• Summarize and list all of the equipment and ingredients to be used.

Preparation

• Construct a plan for a more guided and focused sequence of actions to achieve the goal.

Link to plan

Action

• Attempt the Chiffon Cake on Saturday as a practice.
• Cook the "Tea Eggs" on Monday.
• Cook the Chiffon Cake on Tuesday.
• Cook the Congee on Wednesday.
• Deliver the food at school on her birthday.

Progress and Evidence

Reflections

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16/11/2023

Having woken up at 4:10 A.M., I had approximately 3.5 hours of limited time to complete two recipes, one of which was relatively complicated compared to the other. Effective time management was crucial as I had to carefully organize my steps in the correct order within this short time frame. There were more stages than I had initially anticipated, including the clean-up process, which involved washing a considerable number of dishes and kitchenware. However, in the end, I managed to execute all tasks as planned and completed the challenge before 8 A.M.

Energy and water consumption were again major ethical and environmental concerns. Nonetheless, improvements were made, and resource usage was further restricted to be as environmentally friendly as possible. Furthermore, I also managed to carefully examine the ingredients and their dates of expiry before starting the recipe to ensure that the food was safe to consume. This process should not be omitted in anyway, in any context around the world, as it is crucial to ensure the safety of the food being prepared. Nonetheless, there have always been disheartening cases of food poisoning due to the inappropriate use of ingredients. It is essential that, regardless of who the food is served to, the quality and food safety are always kept to the maximum standard.

13/11/2023

The Chiffon cake proved to be more intricate and skill-demanding than I had anticipated. Timings had to be controlled perfectly, even during the preparation stage, to ensure that the bubbles within the egg white cream were preserved and didn't disappear due to prolonged inactivity. Several challenges emerged during the cooking stage. Firstly, I needed to manage water and electricity usage efficiently, making sure the electric whisk operated in an environmentally friendly manner. Additionally, the timings provided in the tutorial were either inaccurate or potentially incompatible with my appliances, necessitating slight modifications for success. Despite being the most challenging recipe I have attempted, establishing this foundation gives me more confidence to recreate the cake on the day before her birthday.

During this initial trial, I failed to perform all steps without external help. Having to multitask for the first time in the kitchen resulted in failures to maintain correct timings, thus, everything was not possible without the help of my mom, who decided to assist me in managing tasks such as turning off the oven and part of stirring the egg yolk mixture. Nevertheless, the involvement of my mom's collaborative effort made me realize the difficulty of multitasking and how careful I'd have to be in the real cooking process.