Pride-Full Bagels

A burst of color unexpected, I got this idea from the Great British Baking Show! In California, I worked for a company that specialized in care for individuals with intellectual and physical disabilities. The client that I worked with loved to bake, I would supervise my client while they baked. Occasionally, we would play bake with a Play-Doh baking set. I wanted to connect more with my client, I know that I loved to bake as well and thought, hmm? What can we do together that would be exciting? One day while we were watching TV, I turned on Netflix and put on the Great British Baking Show. We saw the most amazing, creative, and simple dish. It was a rainbow bagel! Both captivated by the art, I made a promise to recreate this dish and share my results! This was around Halloween, and I lived in a student artist housing facility. My house had 24 members at the time. I love to cook, and almost every holiday, I would host a party with one other roommate of mine. She and I would make a stunning menu for our house members, and Halloween would be our biggest yet. It would require a lot of work, considering the tediousness of making a rainbow bagel and the amount needed to supply a party. I had waited for what seemed like forever to create this astonishing creation. Here's the twist, a number of my housemates just happened to be vegan. Uh oh! I looked up vegan bagel recipes and you know, bagels aren't bagels without the cream cheese. A majority of the menu wasn't vegan and I wanted to incorporate some items that way everyone could participate. This would be a challenge, but I was up for it. When I was finished, it was worth all of the craziness!

Bagel Ingredients:

6 Bagels

Total cook time approximately 4 hours

2 teaspoons of active dry yeast

1 ½ tablespoon sugar

1 1/2 cups of warm water

3 ½ cups bread flour (add more as needed)

1 ½ teaspoon salt

Mix the sugar and 1/2 cup of warm water

Pour over the yeast

Mix and let rest for 15 minutes

Mix the flour and salt in a LARGE bowl

Make a hole in the middle of your flour mixture

Add in the yeast and sugar mixture with the remaining cup of water

Mix well until your dough is nice and smooth

Flour your surface and knead the dough for 12 minutes

Wet the inside of a large bowl with water and put the dough inside

Make sure the dough is completely covered with water (not swimming)

Cover with a wet (warm) towel and let rise for 1 hour 15 minutes

Once risen, punch down the dough (this is an exercise) and separate it into 4 even portions

Add in your colors using 2 drops of coloring (I used yellow, red, blue, and green)

Mix thoroughly

Cover a baking pan with parchment paper(Make sure you're not using wax paper, a mistake I made oops!)

You will take each color and divide it by 6 and roll each piece into a snake-like figure

After this is done, take your pieces and make a rainbow

Roll your rainbow out into another snake figure and connect both ends by making a circle

Place on your baking pan and cover for 12 minutes

Preheat your oven to 425º

Boil a large pot of water, once your water has boiled lower the temperature to medium

Put your rainbow bagel into the water (2) and let boil for 1 minute 15 seconds on each side and place into oven do this until you have no more bagels left

Bake for 20 minutes

Cream cheese ingredients:

1 package of raw cashews

1 tablespoon of vinegar

1 tablespoon of salt

Boil your cashews in a large pot of water on medium for 2 hours

Drain Cashews and blend with salt, vinegar, and 1/4 cup of remainder of boiled cashew water (If using flavor add-in, do so during blending process) I made apple cinnamon, and wild berry.

Apple:

Cut apples(3) and add cinnamon to boiling water ( 1 1/2 cups)

Cover with top until liquid is gone

Wildberry:

1 package strawberries

1 package blackberries

1 package raspberries

1 package blueberries

Rinse and add to boiling water (1 1/2 cups)

Cover with top until liquid is gone

Pour into a container and refrigerate overnight.

Whoo!

Everyone enjoyed the bagels, and my client was really happy with how they turned out. I was able to send my client pictures of how they were made and how they turned out. On our next scheduled visit, we were able to make some items of our own!