It is strange how 20 people reading the same instruction of a piece of paper can come up with 20 different results. It is not uncommon though. After many years of doing what I am doing I have seen this phenomenon propably a hundred times, and you know what? I am not surprised at all and I know why it happens.
It seems that even after being told a bunch of times, people still do what they think they should do and not do what they are told to do. The art of cooking and baking is very often connected to the art of MEASURING. I think personnaly that anyone can cook, I do not believe that everyone can calculate and understand the importance of weights and measures in cooking.
At this point we prepared a lot of elements that did not require extremely precise measurements. The results, even if different from one to another can still be acceptable. In pastry though, this will not work. A few students tend to run through the stage of weighing the ingredients for their preparations and the results show exactly that. What I find the funniest is the face and the air of disbelief when one that did a poor job at calculation, realises that the cake he made of the pastry he made looks nothing like it should be. We have done exercises where 16 students produce perfect genoa cake and 4 dont. Generally, these 4 individual will blame the recipe from not being accurate.
I promised contests among the group, the first contest is coming soon, and it will involve measurements. I am looking forward to the results. I promise pictures next time.