Kidsburg and Cooking Classes

This past Saturday, I had the opportunity to conduct 4 cooking classes at an event called Kidsburg which was, you guessed it, all about kids! I was in pure kiddie heaven! 

 There's something to be said about cooking instructors. I mean come on, I honestly had no idea who I would get in my classes or how everyone would interact with each other. That in itself is stressful. Throw in a bunch of shopping and ingredient-list-making and I was beyond nervous. But you know what? I do believe that I had 43 of the best, well behaved kids in town. What a treat for me!  

 The prep for this event was, in one word, massive.When I was talking/planning with the event coordinator (Jennifer with Emerge Events) she said that she was planning for 500 kids. For at least 3 weeks I've been thinking "Okay, 500. That's no big deal. I'll only have about 40 in my cooking classes, then I'll make enough cookies for the other kids to be able to decorate at my Pink Box booth. This'll be kinda hard, but easy enough."  Ha ha ha!

 Starting 2-3 weeks before this event, I had made extensive lists mapping out my "plan of attack," detailed shopping lists, prep schedules, baking schedules, and packing lists. (I have mentioned that I'm OCD and have a type-A personality before...right??)

On Thursday, I went to Corner Market and shopped for nearly 2 hours! (Corner Market donated a great deal of money for the ingredients for all of my classes for the day! This store is amazing! They have a wonderful staff and an incredible heart for the community! If you live in the MS area and are not currently shopping at CM, stop what you're doing and start shopping there!!!) I emerged with 2 buggies filled to the brim and I was even more excited about the next 48-52 hours. 

Friday night came and I began the task of baking my booth samples (mini cupcakes and cheesecake bites), 500 cookies, and scooping 500 - 2 ounce cups of icing for decorating said cookies. I was on cookie number 203 when it hit me. This was MASSIVE. It was approaching 10:30pm and all I had was 168 decorated cupcakes, and just 203 cookies baked. I had 297 more cookies to bake! My totally rockin' awesome sister was graciously scooping the icing, and that alone was taking F-O-R-E-V-E-R. We were having major difficulty in seeing the light at the end of this tunnel. All I wanted to do was sleep because I knew that the next day would be non-stop for 12 hours. Uh huh - I cried my river, built my bridge, and started the walk across to the other side. 

At approximately 3:00am the baking and boxing of yumminess ended. Hallelujah! But I wasn't done yet. I had to pack up all of the cooking class supplies, my signs, banners, cards, tablecloths, and everything else that you can imagine possible into my car!

I honestly have no recollection of what time it was when I finally laid down, but when my alarm clock went off I wanted to throw it across the room. Oh well! The show had to go on and I was still super excited to be able to teach some cooking classes!

 The day started with a 7:30(ish) morning set-up and went until 7:30pm for breakdown. I met so many new people, some amazing kids, and watched some pretty cool demos from Jump'In Gymnastics and Purple Dragon.

If you're in the area and want to do something fun at the end of summer next year, be watching for Kidsburg!!

 I'm going to post one of the 12 recipes that the kids and I made in one of the classes. It's called Monkey Munch and if you haven't had it before.....you are truly deprived and missing out on an awesome snack!! It's totally gluten-free too, so those of you on the gluten-free bandwagon can have a cheat day and eat your fill! :) Enjoy!

Happy eating,

~HB~  

Monkey Munch

            9 cups Chex cereal (anyvariety)

1 cup Semi-sweet Chocolate Chips

½ Cup Peanut Butter

¼ Cup Margarine

1 tsp. Vanilla extract

1 ½ cups Powdered Sugar

Put chex in a largebowl and put aside. Place chocolate chips, peanut butter and butter into aquart-sized microwavable bowl. Stir theingredients together. Microwavethe mixture uncovered for a minute on "high." Stir the mix again andcontinue to zap in thirty second intervals until it mixes smoothly. Add the vanilla and stir. Pour chocolate/peanut buttermixture over chex cereal and stir until the cereal is coated. Putcombination into a 2-gallon, Ziploc freezer bag. Add powdered sugar, seal thebag and shake until distributed. Spread Monkey Munch out on wax paper to cooland dry. Keep refrigerated in an airtight container for storage.