I made a confectionery cookbook. In my cookbook, I found a holiday for every month; international and in the US, and found, developed and modified recipes to fit within the holiday’s culture. Usually I would either try to find desserts eaten during the holiday, but if I could not, I would find popular desserts from that country or ingredients that native to that country and incorporate those instead. I chose this project because my family does a lot of baking. My cousin actually teaches a baking class and enters competitions where she develops her own recipes and I felt really inspired to try to learn up on these things myself. Next year, I’m actually going to help her in one of her competitions. My mom and grandma also bake and have their own specialities; my mom’s is cheesecake and my grandma makes a lot of amish and traditional desserts and is amazing at decorating cakes. I really wanted to keep the baking tradition alive in my family and by doing this project, I feel like I could continue it by learning as much tips, tricks, and techniques as I can. As with the international aspects, I wanted to incorporate other holidays besides one that are very common here in the United States. While I did pick a couple, most of the holidays are from other countries. By doing this, I worked with ingredients that were more uncommon and learned a few techniques I wouldn’t have otherwise.

To complete my capstone, the first thing I did was find a different holiday for every month. Once I had done this, I looked to see what different things I could make. I had to find things that would pertain to the holidays in the corresponding country, but was still something in my skill set and appetizing to people here in the United States. Making the treats delicious for people in the US was important to me because there are many people who limit their flavors to chocolate and vanilla, but I wanted to show that new things may be just as good or even better. Once I had laid out a few recipes, I began making them week by week; trying one recipe per week. If the recipe did not work out, I would either try to remake it that day if there were enough ingredients left over or I would try to make it again the following week. When I was at least a little satisfied with a product, I would bring it to school so people could try them and give me feedback. Manna was especially helpful with this because she was very honest and not afraid to tell me when something had a weird taste or needed something extra.

In order to keep on schedule, I made a timeline and had notifications sent to my phone that told me the agenda of each week. I also had the entirety of May for revisions.

My biggest obstacle was the green tea cupcake for Independence Day in Morocco, which symbolized their national drink; green tea with mint. I probably tried this cupcake about 5 times before deciding to try something else, which took a large chunk of my time. The first cupcake came out too dense for my liking, so I tried a different recipe and even considered using the base mix for my mint cake. This used mostly egg whites to make the cake very light and fluffy. I also could not find matcha, or green tea powder; I could only find instant green tea, which has the flavor, but is mostly composed of sugar. Therefore, every time I made the cake, the flavor was not as strong as I wanted it to be. In the end, I decided to just make my own peppermints to focus more on the mint aspect of the national drink. To complete my capstone, I used a lot of cooking blogs. Usually I would trust food network or some other big name cooking company more than food blogs, but the recipes for the big companies were more complex than they needed to be or they simply did not have what I was looking for. The food blogs had innovative recipes that I could work off of, even if I had to modify these recipes more. I even used a few foreign blogs that used the metric system. I had to convert different ingredients into the imperial system, which is really risky especially when it comes to baking powder. In order to do this, I also had to use online converters.

I am most proud of my entire final product. I was able to pull everything together and even though I had some trouble, I was able to have at least one recipe for every month. I am also very proud of my recipe for September. I didn’t really find a holiday that took my interest in September that did not take place in a country I had already focused on, so, since it is my birthday month, I included a recipe that I had developed myself. It does not appeal to everyone and it may contain an acquired taste, but nonetheless I am still proud of it because there are some who do like it. When it comes to baking, I feel like as long as something is liked by someone, it was worth making.

From this capstone, I learned how to manage my time well for a long term project. I also learned that it is best to leave a gap of time for revision to make up for mistakes and obstacles that may prevent a timely finish.

If I could do this all over again, I would start earlier and I would look at more video tutorials on certain techniques, such as folding and creaming. I would probably find a way to link the recipes better by maybe having a common theme or sticking to one place. I was not able to include as much information as I wanted to because I had limited space and I didn’t want whole pages filled with information. In my eyes, having full pages of written information would take down the creative aspect of my final product.

I made SLA a better place by encouraging people to try different things. People usually only want mundane things that could be bought from anywhere or made with a pre-made mix, but I wanted to encourage diversity when it came to the things they ate. Usually when I had people taste test things for me, they either did not really like that certain thing, they had never had it or were reluctant to try it. I, however, wanted different views on different items and so I pressured people to try things. Even if it is not something they would eat on a regular basis or something they would choose over their favorites, at least they had tried them.

1.  "Trendpak." : Trend of Culture Pakistan. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Jan. 2013. <http://trendpak.blogspot.com/2011/04/trend-of-culture-pakistan.html>.

This source provides information about the culture of Pakistan. The information based on cultures and traditions is divided into the sections of all four provinces which then include the total mass, population, languages and dresses of each province. Although I already knew a lot of information provided in this resource but it still helped me in refreshing of all that information in my mind. It is very effective resource because it includes the portraits and paintings of culture which is really helpful for me because of same idea of painting for this project. In short, it provided me enough information and helped in organizing the ideas.

2.   Kwait, Derek M. Differences between Pakistan & the U.S. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Jan. 2013.

<http://www.ehow.com/info_8529305_differences-between-pakistan-usa.html>.

           One limitation of this source was that it just discussed about religion, government, culture, education and women. There are many other components out there which can be added to enhance the complexity and information of the source and give the reader more information besides above components. Overall I would say, this source was a good one to share and compare the two countries, who are religiously and culturally different. Still I am able to gather the things which are required for my project.

3.   Pavri, Tinaz. "Countries and Their Cultures." Pakistani Americans. Jrank, n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2013

<http://www.everyculture.com/multi/Le-Pa/Pakistani-Americans.html>.

I selected this source because its beyond the discussion of Pakistani culture. It not only talks about the simple term"Culture" but divides the components which make the culture together such as cuisine, traditional dresses, languages, dances and songs, holidays and celebrations, families and community dynamics, weddings and funerals, religion and etc. Besides this, it also talks a little about the history and immigration wave before partition. This source can help a lot in collecting a lot of ideas to start off with the project.

4. "Culture of Unites States." Martinfrost.ws. Martinfrost, n.d. Web. 29 Jan. 2013.

<http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/american_culture.html>.

Similar to the upper one (based on the components that add up to make a culture), this source discusses is very beneficial to gather ideas. But the only difference is that this one is about the Culture of the United States. It also have important and well organized ideas which make up culture of U.S. Names, food, popular culture, technology, sports, clothing, education, language, religion, jobs, housing, relationships, gender roles etc, are discussed very thoroughly in this source which is the proof of reliability of this source.

5. "US Culture." Kwintessential.co.uk. Kwintessential, n.d. Web. 29 Jan. 2013.

<http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/resources/global-etiquette/usa.html>.

I really liked this source because it not just keep talking about the above components of culture including language but also goes beyond to them and discusses about the etiquettes of business, dining, greetings, giving gifts, communication, which is very interesting to learn about. Other than this it also includes the facts and statistics about location, capital, population, climate and diversity. This source is different than others because of the reason that I discussed above. It also helped me in getting to know about the etiquettes of different classes in U.S.

6. "Over 55 Years’ Experience of English Language Teaching." St Giles International. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2013.

<http://www.stgiles-international.com/forms/General_cultural_information_usa.pd>.

This document gives information about American customs, and discusses those points which are obviously different than other cultures and traditions. It gives a very detailed information about the manners of people at different places such as on road, public transportations, crosswalks, social behaviour, “Excuse me” and contact. The reason why I chose this is because it is different than other documents and gives information which is very detailed and also discussed in an organized manner.

7. "Culture and Ethnic Groups | USA.gov." Culture and Ethnic Groups | USA.gov. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2013.

<http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/History-Culture.shtml>.

This source gives information about not only American culture including folklife, holiday, social and cultural history, facts about American flag, but also about African American history and culture, Asian American history and culture, Hispanic and Latino history and culture and native Americans history and culture. This source doesn’t help a lot but still it can be said that this source can be used for this project to learn different histories and cultures of United States.

8. "Pakistan Culture." Kwintessential.co.uk. Kwintessential, n.d. Web. 29 Jan. 2013.

<http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/resources/global-etiquette/pakistan.html>.

Similar to one of the above resources, this one also discusses about the facts and statistics of Pakistani language, culture and religion. It also gives knowledge about the etiquettes of different classes just like in America. The whole resource is classified into sub-sections which then give information about location, populations, ethnic makeup, religions, society and culture (Islam, family and hierarchical society), etiquettes and customs. It also gives knowledge about the etiquettes of dining, business and gift giving etc, which is really helpful and also marks this source as a reliable source.

9. Kartha, Deepa. "The Culture of Pakistan." Buzzle.com. Buzzle.com, 26 Sept. 2011. Web. 30 Jan. 2013.

<.http://www.buzzle.com/articles/the-culture-of-pakistan.html>.

This source tells about the culture, architecture, art , literature and social culture. Tells that pakistani culture is not limited to urdu but a lot of work written in language. Specially government paper matters and laws are written in english. About social culture that mostly Pakistanis are conservative in nature, In short it gives a lot information for their beleifs and thoughts.

10. "Pakistan Culture." , Pakistan State Culture, Pakistani Culture, Tourism. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2013.

<http://pakistan.saarctourism.org/pakistan-culture.html>.

This tourism website gives information about Pakistan; its culture and places. The reason why I chose this because it provides information about history and mainly culture to attract tours to make a visit of the country. I just wanted to use this source because of the reliability of this website which is very significant in order to judge a source.

11. ":: PAKISTAN CULTURE :: Ministry of Culture ... Government of Pakistan ::." :: PAKISTAN CULTURE :: Ministry of Culture ... Government of Pakistan ::. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2013.

<http://www.pakistanculture.org/index1.php

I selected this source because of many reasons. This is a website of Pakistani culture which just provides information and knowledge of each and everything and every culture’s information. This one source is enough for getting all knowledge of Pakistani culture such as Pakistani people and land, historical perspectives, cultural heritage and archaeological heritage.

12. "American Culture through Painting." Library.csi.cuny.edu. Library.csi, n.d. Web. 29 Jan. 2013.

<http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/335/02ATArtworks.pdf>.

One limitation of this source is that it just gives description and understanding of American culture through painting and sculptures. Besides this, there are many things which could be added to increase its reliability. Although it provides some portraits and paintings of American culture but those are not enough for understanding for my project but still it gives me a little idea of what my painting should look like and how should I reflect culture in drawings.

13. "Prof. A. R. NAGORI." Prof. A. R. Nagori. N.p., 30 Jan. 2013. Web. 30 Jan. 2013.

<http://www.arnagori.com/works/category/2-return-to-sphinx.html>.

This one is an official website of a Pakistani artist A.R Nagori which includes his paintings about every topic. I chose this one because it does have paintings about different cultures of Pakistan which is really helpful because those paintings give me ideas of how a typical cultural painting should look like. Examples of paintings include landscapes of Thar, village and Karachi city.

14. "Architecture of USA." Wikipedia.org. Wiki, n.d. Web. 29 Jan. 2013.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_the_United_States>.

Wikipedia gives a lot of useful information about any topic or issue or whatever. This is a wikipedia source which is about the architecture of United States. I would be including architecture of both countries. Therefore I chose this source because it provides me information about the architecture of U.S. I already have enough information of Pakistani architecture which is why I didn’t include any source for Pakistani architecture. In short, it has enough detailed information about U.S architecture and its developments since its history.

15.  Evans, Marrion Boddy. "Learn to Paint: Your First Ever Painting." About.com Painting. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2013.

<http://painting.about.com/od/paintingforbeginners/a/first_painting.htm>.

I looked up for such sources and selected this one because it gives me enough information about how to paint. It also points out some strategies to begin with the painting including materials, decisions, steps, finding ideas, safely usage of colors etc and etc. This is so helpful because it provides information for beginners and I needed this information because I am going to do painting for the first time.