Archive: Around Town

"Who doesn't like chocolate?" asks Lansing Recreation Director Steve Colt.  Obviously it's a rhetorical question.

That's why Colt expects a new class, 'For the Love of Chocolate', will have no trouble filling up.  On February 6th kids will gather at the Lansing Community Center kitchen to cook some traditional chocolate dishes... and some not so traditional.

"The flavor of unsweetened chocolate really enhances a chili recipe," says 7th grade English teacher Stacie Kropp, who will teach the four-hour class with 5th grade science teacher Carolyn Shaw.  "It adds a real depth of flavor to it.  It makes it very rich.  it mixes really nicely with spices.  There is quite a thing going on now with spicy chocolate.  You can buy truffles made with hot chili peppers.  It's that same idea, only a savory version of it."

Kropp and Shaw offer week-long cooking camps in the summers, and like to sprinkle the school year with one-day sessions.  In the fall they offered baking with fall fruits and vegetables using pumpkins and apples.  In December they offered a cookie exchange class, with five teams of kids baking one of five different types of cookies. 

The new class will start with a brief history of chocolate.  Kropp says it was used for money by the Aztecs, and it was the French who added sugar, using it as an aphrodisiac and a sweet alcoholic drink.  Eventually it evolved into candies.  But Kropp says that chocolate can be used for more than just snacks and desserts.

Chocolate Lava CakeThat's why kids will make chocolate chili, as well as truffles, brownies, double chocolate banana bread, and molten lava cakes.  Each team will make their own batches, so they can take home samples of every dish they cook.  They also take home the recipes.  Parents report that kids like to use the recipes at home to cook for their families.

"We're also going to taste those different types of chocolate from Hershey, Cadbury, Lindt, and Nestlé to see how they are different," Kropp says.  "We're also going to taste white chocolate, which actually isn't chocolate at all, but is the sweetest version of chocolate.  And we'll taste unsweetened chocolate."

Kropp says cooking is a great way to build important other skills.

"We had a parent who home-schooled her daughter call to say, 'The amount of progress my daughter made in her reading ability and her desire to read in one week of cooking camp amazed me.'  There are so many life skills that go into cooking," Kropp says.  "It's not just reading -- you're using math constantly.  Every cooking experience is like a mini-science experiment."

Kropp and Shaw are self-taught cooks.

"We enjoy cooking for our families and we found we were kindred spirits when we started talking about cooking," says Kropp.  "We get excited about it and we share recipes often.  It was a natural fit for us, working with kids and teaching them how to cook."

"Stacey and Carolyn do a great job with this stuff," Colt says.  "It should be sweet."

v12i4