Double Chocolate Cookies

Source: Buzzfeed

     Back in October I had a BAD case of Bronchitis. I was home sick for a week, and needed something to do to keep myself "resting" on the couch. I perused Neflix for an addicting new show, and lo and behold, found a winner. It's called "The Great British Baking Show." I think now it's just called the Great British Bake Off, but on Netflix the first season had a different name.



     Anyway, I plowed through the series in two days. It was so interesting! The challenges were unique and complicated, the mix of personalities between the competitors was engaging to watch, and the judging was fair. I especially like how they are able to practice two of their recipes beforehand, but the third one is a complete surprise with vague directions. Plus, you know, cute little background video of baby goats, bad (BAD) puns by the hosts, and all the drama of "Will it cook in time? Is it going to be too dry? Those look horrible, I bet he/she gets sent home" makes it worthwhile to watch.

     In case you weren't convinced you need to go watch this show now, I'll mention that one of the judges is named Mary Berry. I kid you not, that is her name! I even looked her up to see if she'd changed her name to match her baking profession, but didn't find anything conclusive. I'll keep looking. She is a cute little grandma you want to keep in your pocket, but then you're afraid she'll tell you that your cooking is too dry or not evenly baked. And you don't want to disappoint Mary Berry because it's like disappointing your own cute little grandma.



     Of course, I made my husband watch the show. And other people. I have totally watched the full season like 3 or 4 times you guys. Hubs found it entertaining. He hated the puns but still enjoyed the show, which is a sign of a good show if he can put up with the bad puns. He was clever for Christmas and got me "Mary Berry's Baking Bible- over 250 classic recipes." It's adorable, and so British. He said that when he looked it up online, it got bad reviews because Americans were annoyed that the measurements were all metric. But when it comes to baking, let me tell you, it is amazing how consistent your results are when you measure on a scale instead of using measuring cups! You will need a small kitchen scale to make these cookies. Don't fear the scale!

     The only downside to these cookies was that I completely forgot to use self-rising flour. I pulled it out and put it on the counter, and then used regular flour for some reason that I can't even explain. I was angry at myself for it, but then the cookies tasted AMAZING and came out so well that I couldn't be mad anymore.  Don't tell Mary Berry.

     These cookies taste like chocolate fudge, but they have a chewy cookie consistency. Add in the extra chips ("buttons" as Mary Berry puts it!) and they are a scrumptious treat. We ate the whole batch in 2 minutes. Maybe a bit longer. But only because we left them at home while we were away a work. In all seriousness, they are, quite simply, delicious.


Mary Berry's Double Chocolate Cookies

from "Mary Berry's Baking Bible," page 201

Taken from Mary Berry: "Dead easy to make, these are wonderful cookies. Expect an irregular shape. They are very soft when they come out of the oven but will harden up considerably on cooling. This recipe makes about 36 cookies."

Ingredients:

200 g (7 oz) plain chocolate
50 g (2 oz) butter
397 g (14 oz) can of condensed milk
225 g (8 oz) self-rising flour
65 g (2.5 oz) milk or white chocolate buttons (I used milk chocolate chunks)

Method:

1. Lightly grease 3 baking trays (I used parchment paper). Break up the chocolate and gently melt it along with the butter in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water, stirring occasionally (I used a double boiler). Stir in the condensed milk and then take off the heat and cool.

2. Mix in the flour and the chocolate buttons and chill the mixture until firm enough to handle. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit).

3. Place large teaspoonfuls of the mixture spaced well apart on the prepared baking tray. Bake in the pre-heated oven for about 15 minutes. The cookies should still look soft and will glisten. Don't overcook them as they soon become very hard. Carefully remove the cookies with a cookie spatula and cool on a wire rack.

My Bullet Journal Set Up

     Close your eyes and remember the last time you got a new planner. Clean pages! Limitless possibility for the next year! I LOVE that feeling, and every time I got a planner at school I was one of those kids who highlighted important dates immediately, used it religiously to track assignments, write down funny quotes, and doodle during class. If you are a planner person, you know what I'm talking about.

     People say I am organized. My older brother visited and gawked at my kitchen, admiring the cabinet organization. My files at work are color coded, organized by date I need to review them, and ready to go at a moment's notice. My husband knows that things need to go in certain places and he will likely not have a hand in determining those places because I will organize things to a T. Or an L, if that's the way it needs to be. Efficiency is what makes organization work. Yet, somehow, on any given day, I am keeping up with the following:

• Maybooks daily and monthly planner (contains both work and personal)
• Work Google Calendar (shared with work people, for meetings and reminders of game duty)
• Personal Google Calendar (shared with the hubs, he also has his own)
• Meal planning calendar on the fridge (dry erase board)
• Scraps of paper/post its for grocery lists
• To-Do lists on Color Notes on my phone
• Blank Blog posts with vague titles (where I put my ideas, so I don't forget them)
• Sending my work email reminders from my personal email so I don't forget something important the next day. I'm so cool.

     Seriously? It's no wonder I forget things like people's birthdays (though I do have a birthday calendar for that), the day of the week, or even how to spell my own name. Actually, my work ID badge has my name spelled wrong and I didn't even notice until someone pointed it out last week. I've had that badge for 6 months...

     In the spirit of the New Year, I decided I need to put some efficiency in my organization. So I'm embarking on a Bullet Journaling system to help manage the chaos that is not only my schedule but also my brain. Remember the post about tabs? Yeah. Alllll the tabs.

I am using a Leuchtturm 1917 notebook and whatever pens I have laying around. I happen to have ordered some new Pilot G2 pens so those made it in my picture. I find, though, that if I get specific about only using certain pens in journals, then I journal less because they pens are not always around! 

     Bullet Journaling is system of organizing a notebook- any notebook- into a yearly/monthly/daily planner and reflection journal, all in one. Through a system of dots, dashes, circles, and habits, your notebook is efficiently organized into a calendar. Then, you use the rest of the pages as they come. You set up what you need to start and move on page by page, instead of being confined to a regular calendar and having blank pages at the end to use.

The left is how you set up the monthly view, and the right page is a "tracker"
where you can customize things you want to keep track of on a regular basis.

     I've gotten inspiration from these folks, who have all but convinced me that by Bullet Journaling, my handwriting and lettering will become impeccable.

I drew this in the front of my planner to fill a blank page

~ Boho Berry
~ This Marie Claire Article
~ Lifehacker Article

     My Bullet Journal will consolidate several of those bullets above and has already, in 4 days, helped me reorganize, recharge, and input some time for restorative journaling in my daily life! It's a wonderful creative mini-outlet. If you are a planner person, I totally encourage you to check out the links above- it may be for you! I'll update my blog with progress and tips when I've used it a little longer than 4 days. ;-)

Part of my goal with the Bullet Journal system is to have a daily option for creative outlet; part of that includes making mistakes! While I love that I can make my planner pretty, and I hope to continue making it look cute and inspiring, it's important to recognize that everything in there will not be pretty. Mistakes and messy writing WILL happen. For example, I tried to write a verse of the week for National Handwriting Day, and I didn't like how it looked. Instead of wasting space I just started over mid-page. Still looks nice!

For future planning, you add a "future log," or mini calendar. I have 6 months out because I liked how that fit on 2 pages nicely. It helps keep track of those things you don't have going on this month, but you don't need to count out pages ahead and start a new month this way. 

Bonus shark photo in my new light box, at my husband's request

Self-Paced Unit: 8th grade Volume

I'll set the scene: it's the 9th day back at school since Christmas. Students no longer have pencils, notebooks, homework- they're done trying to make a good impression (that was last week). They've got an insatiable desire to socialize, they somewhat remember what we've been learning, so the're a little confident that they don't need to pay attention very well (or, they DO remember what we've been learning and are more than ready to move on). When the students had left for the day, the three of us that teach 8th grade math just looked at each other, exhausted, shaking our heads. My co-teacher said, "Am I crazy to want our next unit to be a self-paced one?" She had just completed a self-paced unit on Pythagorean Theorum with her 7+ class, and had gotten really good feedback. She wanted to create some of that independence in learning for our students and give them time to focus on the learning, instead of on each other. 

But our classes are inclusion. My thoughts turned to thinking about individual students on my caseload, wondering if they'd be capable of managing a self-paced lesson. Several of our peers have had success with it, so why shouldn't we give it a try? 

In many ways, self-paced units are perfect for inclusion classes. Students can move at their own pace, meaning the high-flyers are able to move on instead of putting their heads down while someone else asks a question we answer with 3rd grade math. Others who need a little more time are allowed that time, without anyone knowing they're moving at a slower pace. Those who need 1:1 or small group instruction can get that, because I'm not large group instructing, and I have time to pull students, float around and answer individual questions, and there are two of us in the room doing so! Students keep track of their own scores on the check-ins, and thus learn a way to manage their own learning. It really is the perfect idea. We all agreed that the next unit, on Volume, would be a good one to schedule as self paced for these classes- it's short, mainly involves memorizing and using formulas, and we were confident that we could make it manageable for our lowest performing students, through both monitoring and organization.

The only real problem for us was that we were starting the next unit the NEXT day. 

So, I'm blogging today to show you (mostly you fellow teachers!) that no matter how little time you have to prepare, a self-paced unit isn't an overwhelming amount of work. Part of why we had not done one in our class yet was because we thought- "WHEW that's going to take a lot of work!" It does, but it doesn't have to take more work than you have time for. Here's what we put together, in just one afternoon! I don't have feedback yet about how it went because we are only on "day 2." I'll update that when we've finished the unit and moved on. BUT, I can say, by the end of the 1st day, some of our hardest working  (and successfully so) students were students with disabilities. It was a proud teacher moment to watch them succeed on their own! 

(Sorry for the potato quality pictures. My laptop didn't want to cooperate with editing. )

 UNIT OVERVIEW

My Co-teacher used this format in her other class. It simply lists, in student friendly language, the goals of the unit, the CC Standards, and the directions for the unit. To foster independence and allow us as teachers to focus on content questions, we refer all the instructions questions back to this page.

OUTLINE

Keeping things simple, and again using my co-teacher's formatting, we list the standards for each "day" of the unit, the pages they'll use in their interactive notebook, the lesson outline (aka what the students must complete), and what the assessment will be.

Highlights denote items they'll need paper copies for; links go to the videos, Google Docs, and pdfs they'll need for notes and instruction. Not only does the outline keep the student on track, but it helps with those DuFour questions we use in PLC's.

(Unit Outline page 2, so you can see not every lesson starts with a video)

SAMPLE ASSESSMENT

Since formulas are one of those "you get it or you don't" things in Math, we've used basic exit tickets for assessment. We also use the TenMarks lessons as an assessment to mix it up. TenMarks has a free component that is great! We used it last year, then petitioned for the accounts this year- which ended up being a district wide purchase based on our experience.

 STUDENT SCORESHEET

We created this as a half-sheet for students to put in their interactive notebooks. This way, they keep track of their grades. With her 7+ students, my co-teacher simply had them make a copy of the overview document and track their scores that way. With our inclusion students, we didn't want to deal with the hassle of copy/sharing, so we just gave them this. We check if they've mastered it after grading their assessment, and then they move on! If they have to move on but haven't mastered, we note their score in the score column and leave mastery blank, so they know to go back and try again later on. 

TIPS

Prioritize! 

Collaborate! 

Modify what you already have!

Share it with parents, including answer keys as appropriate!