TED Talk Reflection

So I guess I'll work my way through the bullet points on the assignment sheet and how I think I did on each one.

1. Four to five minutes? I hope so! During my many practice runs I usually got anywhere between 4:30 and 5 minutes flat. During my presentation I remember telling myself in my head to slow down, but it was probably much closer to 4:30 than 5. 
2. Visual Content? I used a keynote and I was pretty proud of it to be honest. All of my pictures (besides what the Tart was supposed to look like) were personal photos. So either I or someone with me took all of them. I wanted to make it more original and more like it came from me. This applies especially with the slide full of cakes made my my Dad. Unfortunately when I tried to plug it in I had some technical difficulties, but thanks to Ms. Campagna, it wasn't a problem at all. (I also kept pointing my remote at the screen behind me and not the computer which was annoying.)
3. Content? I tried to convey that you should find something that you enjoy doing, even if you aren't that good at it. This didn't specifically relate to baking, but it was how I kept making desserts every week. I don't know how well this really was communicated through my presentation  so that wasn't really how I had planned it. I definitely showed my product, the cheesecakes turned out to be a big hit and I got rid of all of the ones I brought to school throughout the day (people were like ambushing me for them, but I guess that means they really liked them right?) 
4. Organization? I tried to refer to my dad and his cake decorating/baking/food making hobby periodically throughout the presentation, and I think that went well, although my transitions were lacking for sure. I didn't like my conclusion either. The whole "I want to leave you with 3 things" thing was stupid but I didn't know any other way to finish it off. 
5. Delivery? I hate giving presentations and I am never ever good that them. The period before I presented, I was running through my note cards and practicing, and honestly I was very confident then. I could give my speech without reading off of the cards, and only glancing maybe once or twice per card. I practiced in from of my parents, my friends, my math teacher even, basically anyone who would listen, and I read enthusiastically, confident, and was almost funny. However when I got on the stage things just went bad. I was stuttering and reading straight from the cards, this time looking up once or twice per card when it should have been the opposite. I just get scared in front of people and I definitely need to work on that, I just hope this didn't hinder how passionate and how much fun I really had throughout the process. 

In total, I think my TED Talk deserved maybe a 26 or 27 out of 30. Though I really disliked my delivery, I was truly proud of the content, which is something I normally can't say about a presentation I'll give. Also the cheesecakes were a hit and that was something I was worried about prior to the project. 

Again, I wasn't proud of my public speaking skills, and I wasn't even up there to do something as brave as play an instrument or sing, but for me, just speaking was an accomplishment. Though it wasn't perfect, it wasn't horrible either, which is definitely a plus! 

Possibly the worst thing that has come from my kitchen, Ever.

Last week, I made brownies! For some reason I was in the mood, and we had all the ingredients already at home. Unfortunately, no one was available to help me document the process, also unfortunately, I do not have the recipe! It was a family recipe that my Aunt has been making for years, and she pretty much just told me everything as I went along. I do have a picture though! (They were great!)

I was super excited to make something from a recipe I knew instead of one from the internet, and it turned out great!

Then things took a turn for the worst.

I decided to make a dessert from South Africa, called the Chocolate Milk Tart.

Recipe

Ingredients

1 tin condensed milk

750 ml milk

45 ml corn flour

60 ml cocoa powder

5 ml vanilla essence

2 eggs

45 ml butter

1 packet of coconut/tennis biscuits

Method

Reserve 125ml of the milk and add the rest of the milk together with the condensed milk to a medium saucepan and gently heat until hot and steaming - not boiling.
While the milk is heating, combine the reserved milk, corn flour, cocoa, essence and eggs. Add this mixture to the hot milk very slowly, whisking over moderate heat until thickened. This should take no more than 5 minutes.
Remove from the heat and stir in the butter.
Place a layer of biscuits into a greased tart dish. Spoon the hot custard over the biscuits and dust with cinnamon.
Allow to stand at room temperature to set for about 45 minutes to an hour or chill in the fridge.
Best served at room temperature with good coffee.

Makes 1 milk tart.

Well my first issue was the ingredients were measured in milliliters (and because of how lazy I am) conversions were a pain. The second issue was I COULD NOT FIND CORN FLOUR ANYWHERE OR TENNIS BISCUITS??? So I used Corn starch (which an unreliable wiki answers source told me was a substitute) and Nilla wafers instead of tennis biscuits (also a really bad decision.) 

Everything started off well, I added what was supposed to, and I was on the right track with heating up the milk. 

Not much to explain at this point, I combined them:

Ok, so here is where things got a bit tricky. I was supposed to mix the two together and whisk them until they thickened. It was going to cool for a while where it would set, so it wasn't supposed to be too thick yet, but obviously not the consistency of like water. So it for real was not working and it was like chocolate milk and not good at all. I honestly didn't know what to do here, so I figured I would just move. THIS IS DEFINITELY THE PART WHERE THE CORN FLOUR/CORN STARCH WOULD BEGIN TO SHOW PROBLEMS. 

I laid down my pie/cake/tart crust thing and realized that this is probably why Nilla wafers wasn't going to work, because when I poured the mixture in...

The Pie crust floated to the top omg. The pie crust was literally floating on top of the unset (basically chocolate milk) tart mix thing. 

SO I JUST PUT IT IN THE FRIDGE AND I THOUGHT THERE WAS NOTHING MORE I COULD POSSIBLY DO. 

Yeah so this really didn't go well I'm not gonna lie, I screwed this one up pretty bad. 

After like 5 hours of setting, it was still chocolate-milky. 

But hey enjoy these photos of my cousin and my Dad theatrically eating (slurping?) the tart (it was not a tart at all if you think about it, it was more like melted ice cream. My cousin really enjoyed it though!

Overall, It's a really good thing that my project is not based on improvement, and more of an experience type thing, because by these standards, I got worse?