WikiHow Final Project

When thinking about what topic to create a WikiHow with, it can be quite daunting, especially when most of your ideas are already taken. One person can have so many thoughts in one day so imagine how many people can choose a WikiHow topic before you can put one out. It is a really challenging task and you really have to dig deep to find something that you are really passionate about to be able to teach it to an audience successfully.

When thinking about what would be a good idea for a WikiHow, a bunch of ideas came to my head that was already taken. However, I figured out that I learned how to bake these Black Magic Bars and even though I wasn’t a huge fan of baking, I knew that I would be able to have fun making them again and enjoy teaching people how to make this delicious treat. It’s filled with Oreos and three different kinds of chocolate chips so what non-vegan could possibly resist this treat?

This is a recipe I discovered off of a small website called 5boysbaker.com. It intrigued me so much a while ago that I really wanted to see how good an Oreo dessert could be. I was always a fan of an Oreo pie or an Oreo McFlurry and I'm positive several people feel the same. Therefore, I gave this recipe a shot and heard back amazing things from the family and friends who had some. Like I previously said, I don’t see baking as a career choice of my own, but it really is a good tool to whip out when you want to impress or simply serve everyone a delicious treat at a gathering of your choosing.

When planning to bake this treat again, it took a lot of preparation. In fact, it cost about $35 to get all the ingredients that were needed to bake this delicious treat. So it may not be the most budget-friendly treat but it is definitely very fun to bake for yourself or for others. The recipe required baking kitchen supplies such as a baking tray, cooking spray, an oven, and even a blender if you didn’t want to crush the Oreos yourself. This really showed me that I picked a good topic because of the fact that many people could bake this dessert with very little experience and common household baking items.

I took pictures while baking this for this WikiHow Project. Every photo taken was by myself during the process and sometimes pictures had to be retaken because of the fact that I didn’t get the chocolate chips falling in mid-air from the spoon to the bowl. This may sound ridiculous but it is actually something I tend to focus on when creating something; imagery. If the image cannot accurately capture the viewer’s full attention, it can be ineffective in drawings readers deeper into the WikiHow. With the internet, people are much quicker to critique work and you risk the chance of having them fall off your bandwagon when you cannot capture a captivating photo of what you want them to learn. For example, when you look at a package of Goldfish on the shelf at the grocery store and you see a few of the goldfish smiling and zooming towards the package, it looks intriguing and very drawing to your attention. Compare that to a house brand of “goldfish” where you might get a couple of images of the actual food on the outside of the box and boring text. I can guarantee that most of the population would choose Goldfish over the house brand, not because of the quality, but because of the imagery on the box itself.

In creating this WikiHow, it was interesting to see other examples on the site as a reference. Creating a “how-to” of something can be particularly intriguing and at the same time, horrifying. So finding an idea and sticking with it is the most important step to finish a project like this because it builds confidence in other things you might publish in the future. However, it could only be a recipe, but it is a building block towards something much greater.

Here is a link to my WikiHow Article : https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Black-Magic-Bars