Carrot Cake!

This week for my learning project I decided to make carrot cake with cream cheese icing! I decided to do this for two reasons:

1. I love carrot cake in the fall.
2. I had many carrots in my fridge that I had to get rid of.

For this week, I decided to use an app called Tasty. This app has thousands of recipes online from different cultures, levels of difficulty, occasions, and more! I had heard of this app before, so I decided to try it out! I love the search engine because you can refine your search for difficulty, diets, meal type, cooking style, and cuisine. This makes it much easier to find ideas for exactly what you are looking for. The app also has a community button near the bottom of the screen which you can scroll and see what people made and if they enjoyed the recipe. There is also another page called Mean Plans. This shows many different meal plans with multiple recipes that you can follow for various reasons. Some that stood out to me were Fiesta of Flavours, Cozy Carbs, Game Day Finger Food, and Gluten-Free Delights. Another nice thing about this app is that you can save different recipes to your account so you don’t lose them. I can also make different cookbooks as well! For example, I can make a cookbook for each meal of the day so it is easier for men to sort through the recipes for what I am looking for.

 

Each recipe I have found starts with a description of the food, the approximate time it would take to make, and a percentage based on how many people would make the recipe again. The recipes also have a video you can follow to see if you think you could make it. There is also a comment and review section to see what other people think and how they made it! Under this particular recipe, I saw many different ways the carrot cake was presented. Some were in cupcakes, some were decorated with cream cheese icing carrots, some were covered in walnuts, and more! Another awesome feature is that you can adjust the serving amount to change the ingredient amounts! This could be very beneficial if you lived in a smaller or larger household, so you don’t have to do the math to calculate the amount you need for each ingredient. This would also be beneficial for someone who was hosting a large amount of people such as a wedding. The recipes also clearly state what ingredients you need and how much. If you scroll down further, the app will show the step-by-step needed for the recipe. It also gives an approximate prep time, cook time, and total time for the recipe. 

 

For this learning project, I decided to use iMovie to create a video of the process of filming myself making the carrot cake. This app is a video editing app available on all Apple devices. The app is very basic and makes it easy to edit videos and put them together. I think this app was very user-friendly and could be used in various age groups and for many different reasons. I believe that iMovie can fit into the SAMR model at different levels depending on its use in the classroom. For example, if students used it to present their ideas instead of orally speaking that would be a substitution. However, iMovie could also be considered a redefinition if students made a documentary or stop-motion video to display their project. I believe this app could be used in all subject areas and for many different reasons. This could be an easier way for students to present their ideas while also allowing for more creativity in their work. 

I began by filming each step of the process. After I completed that I went onto my photo app and edited each clip to remove the sound and cropped the image as well. Once each clip was edited in the photo app, I selected all of the clips I wanted and added them to a movie. 

After that, I clicked each clip and sped it up to double speed. 

 

Once that was done I went through each clip and shortened it. Any of the stuff that was repetitive over a period of time I removed. For example, in many of the mixing clips and sifting clips, you will see jump cuts. I made cuts throughout the video because I did not want to have a 10-minute-long video. 

 

In between each clip, I made sure to click the transition button and change it to none. This is my personal preference, but for this video, I did not want a transition as I thought that it made it look weird. 

I then added texts at the beginning and end of the video. I pressed the + button, clicked the background, and selected a black background. Next, I clicked the black background clips and pressed the “T” button. I was then able to type out what I wanted to display.

Although in iMovie, there is a button to add music through Apple Music, this function was not working for me for some reason. Instead, I went to YouTube and screen-recorded the song of my choice to play in the background of the video. I tried to pick a song that was similar in length to the time of the video. I ended up choosing Iko Iko by The Dixie Cups. 

I then added the clip of the screen recording to the movie. I clicked the clip and detached the audio and visuals. This way I was able to delete the visual and just have the audio recording of the song. I then placed the song correctly over the whole video. Any of the audio that was longer than the visuals I just deleted. After this, I watched the video one last time to make sure there was nothing else I wanted to add. Next, I went to YouTube and uploaded the video to my account. 

 

Here is my final project!

 I enjoyed this recipe as it got me ready for fall cozy vibes as well as used up a large portion of the carrots I had in my fridge. This recipe also could’ve been made into cupcakes as well. I could have decorated the cake more fancier if I had more time, but since it was just my mom and I eating the cake, I decided to just go simple by leaving it on the baking sheet. I rate this recipe a 10/10 and will be making it again in the future. Maybe I will try making it more fancier or into cupcakes!