Cheese Balls Pantry Raid Lab

Cheese balls are often associated with parties, holidays and potlucks!  But why limit them to just those events?  I get to a point in the year when I have “a little of this and a little of that” leftover from other labs and taste tests.  So I decided to have a pantry raid lab and have students make “cheese balls”.  All I had to do was buy a block of cream cheese for each group and provide some parameters for the challenge.  See below for more details.

Criteria

Day 1

  • You must create a cheese ball recipe using your block of cream cheese and 1 cup of cheese (choose from flavors in the pantry which usually include cheddar, mozzarella and/or Monterey Jack).
  • All other ingredients must come from the pantry which I will have on the demonstration table.
  • You will have 10 minutes to create a recipe which will be typed and shared via Google Docs, 10 minutes to create your cheese ball and adjust the recipe if necessary and then your cheese ball will head to the refrigerator to chill and set up overnight.
  • You must take a picture of your cheese ball prior to going into the fridge and use the PicMonkey App to include a creative name for it based on it’s design, shape, appearance and/or taste.
  • Use remaining time to clean up the kitchen.

Day 2

  • Choose your dipper (crackers, vegetables, pretzels, tortilla chips, pita chips, etc.) from the pantry (demo table) and prepare to present/serve your cheese ball.
  • Your group will airdrop the photo/name created in PicMonkey to the screen and present and serve the cheese ball to the class for evaluation.
  • The audience will rate your cheese balls 1-5 on the following criteria: appearance, creativity, taste, texture/ consistency, and aroma.  Students will tally up the total/final for each cheese ball presented and record it onto a Google Form where results will be tallied and revealed at the end of the presentations.
  • Students will also reveal their recipes which will then be shared with the class via Google Docs.
  • Finally, the winning group is announced and awarded a Babybel mini cheese snack!

*Note:  Sometimes, to make it more fun and interesting, I give students a theme.  Themes vary depending on the time of the year.  Some themes include: Holidays, children’s book characters, animals, sports, etc.

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Image courtesy of franky242 from Free Digital Photos

 


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