It’s always great to be a Wylie Bulldog, and now it’s a great time to be cooking like one, too. The advanced culinary art students at Wylie High School recently released their own cookbook, Cooking with the Bulldogs: Wylie Culinary Favorites, highlighting favorite recipes of the students and community.
“The cookbook has a compilation of recipes we have done for events at school, in the community or just in class,” said Sara Blakely, who teaches Advanced Culinary and Culinary 1 at WHS. “We put our White Chicken Chili recipe in there that we made at the Bulldog Christmas Market one year and the Mac-N-Cheese recipe we used in The Big Cheese Competition, a fundraiser for Big Brothers and Big Sisters Foundation we participated in last year.”
Another notable recipe included is the Tres Leches Cake that Senior Nykolas Jaimes has become notable for whipping up that was served to more than 400 guests at the Wylie Bulldog Education Foundation’s dinner in November 2023.
Blakely deemed these recipes “as tried and true” and said the cookbook is a project her advanced culinary students have worked hard on to raise funds for their field trip to the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in San Antonio, Texas this spring. In addition to touring the CIA, students will experience fine dining and visit other food businesses to help reinforce what they have learned in class; this is the first time Wylie culinary students will travel outside Abilene to expand their learning experience. Locally, the students partner with Jason and Joy Cordell, owners of Cordell’s gourmet food shop, bistro and coffee shop.
The $20 cookbook is a hard-working book of about 150 recipes covering appetizers to desserts and everything in between, as well as offers handy information on pantry basics to proper measurement tips. Blakely believes this is the first time Wylie Culinary has offered anything like this to the community, and something she is very proud of her students for taking on since it required additional work outside of the classroom. Students from Blakely’s culinary classes submitted recipes whether it be a class favorite, a family favorite or one of their own. She said each senior had the option to highlight a favorite as well. There are also recipes submitted by students in Intro. to Culinary, which is taught by Chellee Hill.
Cookbooks can be purchased through The Purple Dog Company | Purple Dog Company and picked up at the high school campus or by emailing Sara Blakely at sara.blakely@wyliebulldogs.org. Blakely said there are only about 80 left to purchase.
By Kristen Johnson