Brownies

To continue with my theme of cooking, here are some shots of my middle school third graders (same age as a high school freshman) making brownies. As a prize, I had given Takuya brownies about a month ago. He asked me, in very careful English, if I could give him the recipe. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I used a box mix and that I had never made brownies from scratch. So, I promptly put it off, week after week. Finally, the week before last, on Friday, he shyly came to me and asked, “Mrs. Michelle, do you remember my request?” (Roll your r’s when you read that to yourself). I felt terrible, and decided that my next class with the third graders would be a cooking class.

I looked online and found a recipe to try out. We gathered in the kitchen, broke into two groups, and got started. They did pretty well – for boys. Issei and one of the others couldn’t stop sticking their fingers in the batter and licking them, though. I had to improvise a bit at the end because they were too dry, so I dumped in some oil. After 25 minutes in the ovens, they cooked up nicely. The kids had needed to move on to their next class, so I was taking them out of the oven when they suddenly came crashing into the kitchen. They wanted a taste. So, I plated them up. I was surprised to see that no one was eating. That’s unheard of – boys not attacking brownies?? Turns out they were waiting for the rest of their class. I was dumbfounded. They didn’t want to eat them until everyone was there.

I thought the brownies were a bit dry and not as rich as I would prefer, but the kids seem to like them well enough. Takuya took good notes on his recipe, so maybe he will try it again on his own. He looked up at me as he was munching a brownie and asked if they could eat as many as they wanted. I was, again, surprised by the question. “You made them. Of course, their yours.” Wide-eyed looks were exchanged all around. In rapid Japanese, sprinkled with tidbits of English for my sake, they decided to divide them up and share them with the teachers and the other students (remember, there are only 23 kids in the whole school). They gave me a plate and asked me to pass them out to the teachers. What a great lesson!

I think maybe we should make chocolate chip cookies next.

Here's the kids cooking:
Takuya mixing brownies
Ayaka and Kenta
More cooking
Dividing up the brownies