I was just about to fall
from the chair laughing when one of my former students told me that she has
changed the sweet name that her parents adoringly christened her with to
something that she feels goes with her tomboyish 'personality', now that she
has become a dancer in profession. When I joined their school as a teacher, I
used to be pretty young myself, fresh passout with no job experience
whatsoever. Tackling a class full of noisy teenagers was quite challenging for
me. In the initial days of my joining there, the first batch I was made a class
teacher of put me to the test of how well I deal with adolescent girls. Teenage
girls (thankfully the school was not co-ed) gathered in groups could be quite
intimidating for a young inexperienced teacher like me who herself was pretty student-like
in behavior back then. They used to laugh behind my back (and fall silent when
I would turn around), shower me with a barrage of excuses for not completing
lessons, interrupt my speech at every five minutes asking for permission to go
to the restroom and yes, the most daunting of all was after the test results
were out and I needed to show them their answer papers, they would surround my
table comparing each other's marks and asking me to explain the difference.
As I was not experienced, I
didn't know how tactfully I should reveal the test results and how to quieten
an unruly bunch of girls, which gradually with the help of my ex-colleagues I
mastered in, but before that the best way I could think of grappling with the
situation was to try being as stern as possible by maintaining a very no
nonsense personality in class. Especially the very next year after my joining
when I was made the class teacher of standard twelve, I practiced hard at home
to wear a solemn face, one of gravity and seriousness, very much unlike me, to crack
the whip.
Personally, I am pretty
flamboyant and ever-smiling, one just needs to click the button and I am off to
a bellyaching hysteria. So feigning a no nonsensical persona was not a cinch,
but sometimes in order to do your job right you need to act otherwise going
beyond your usual nature to achieve the result you desire and in my case it was
commanding obedience that my no-nonsense personality drew from students who
used to fall silent even seeing my shadow near their class and at the end,
that's what I needed for managing a class filled with over 50-60 students. But
it's funny albeit sweet to hear my ex-student telling me on FB, "Ma’am,
truly the first time I saw you ever smiling is in your pics"....pretty
amusing, ha!!
Back to the recipe, a poke
cake is a cake with a lot of holes made into it by poking to act as pores to
absorb the liquid mixture poured on top. To add a finale touch, the cake is
crowned with whipped topping and further garnished with crushed wafers.
Ingredients: Cooking time: 2 – 3 hrs
ü Click the link for the recipe of Banana Cake (exclude the nuts if you want)
ü Jello Butterscotch pudding mix (3 oz/85gm)
ü 1 cup of nilla wafers (crushed)
For whipped cream:
ü 1 cup of heavy whipping cream
ü 1 cup confectioners' sugar
ü 1 tsp vanilla extract
ü A pinch of icing color (optional)
Method:
1) Firstly prepare the
banana cake. Cool it down a bit. Then as is standard practice to make poke
cakes, poke the cake with a thick stick or the bottom end of a spoon to make
holes sparsely all across the cake.
2) Meanwhile, get the
pudding ready by following the instructions written on Jello packet. (It takes about 10 minutes.)
3) Pour the pudding on
top of the banana cake spreading evenly with a spatula making sure that
pudding oozes into the holes.
4) Refrigerate the cake
for an hour to let the pudding set.
5) In the meantime, you
may prepare the whipped cream by stirring all the ingredients for whipped
cream together till cream thickens for 10-15 minutes. (To get the best result, put both the container used for whipping the
cream and the beater tool inside the freezer for half an hour before using.)
6) When whipped cream is
ready, take the cake out of the refrigerator and spread the cream across the
top of the cake uniformly, smoothing the surface. Scatter the crushed nilla
wafer on top and cut the cake into desired shape or size and serve.
7) Refrigerate the cake
and warm it in microwave for 10 seconds before serving.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment