Janoah Stegall is all business as she chops dark chocolate in the small kitchen of the Boys & Girls Club’s O.K. Clubhouse in Vancouver. The 17-year-old Fort Vancouver High School junior meticulously chops chips into chunks, eyes only for the task at hand.
That is, until you ask her about what she’s doing.
“I actually really like baking,” Stegall said, speaking a mile a minute. “It’s a way for me to calm down. I can focus on this task over here, then be doing this over here, then work on this over here.”
She waves her arms from one imaginary task to another, mimicking the multiple steps of making baked goods.
Stegall is one of about 10 students at the Boys and Girls Club who attends the program’s Wednesday baking club. Alison Dolder, head of Clark College’s professional baking and pastry arts program, teaches students how to make cakes, cookies and other simple baked goods.
“We try to do basic things that don’t require too many ingredients that they could do at home,” Dolder said. “A lot of them don’t get exposed to cooking.”
While Stegall chops chocolate chips for a triple chocolate cookie recipe, other students measure dry ingredients on an old-school baker’s scale, and another group beats brown and white sugar with butter and eggs.
Dolder talks her students through the differences between white chocolate, milk chocolate and a darker, more bitter 74 percent cacao. Students taste their way through ingredients, discussing them as they go.
“They learn quite a bit,” Dolder said. “A lot learn the balance skills, obviously baking skills, kitchen skills, safety — and they get to eat.”
Teen Turf Club Director Nathan Hamilton helped facilitate the baking class in order to give students a variety of options for after-school activities. The club has a long-standing relationship developing programs with Clark College, he said, and this is an extension of that.
“We really wanted to see if we could make the connection stronger,” Hamilton said.
Just as the Tod and Maxine McClaskey Culinary Institute is slated to open for students this fall in its new building at the Clark College campus, Hamilton said students are learning about options for careers in a culinary field.
Most of the Boys and Girls Club teens are from low-income families, he said, so it’s important to show students examples of a variety of college options.
“Giving them direction is the biggest thing,” Hamilton said. “We’re showing them they have more options than they’ve seen.”
Stegall is among those students who hopes to attend culinary school, either at Clark College or another culinary school in the area.
She’s been cooking with her family since she was little, she said, and binge watching her idols on the Food Network dating back to when celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse was still on the network.
“I love it,” she said. “They like making people happy.”
