I've often heard how good it is for kids to bake because of the math they need to do but have you ever looked at baking from a scientific point of view? Petunia (so not her real name, you know that by now, right?) made cookies yesterday and this recipe got us wondering about what happens when you cream the butter and sugar, and why it's necessary and then from there we found out a few more new facts about baking cookies.
Why do we cream the butter and sugar?
The recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookes from Cloud 9 Bakery we used had us cream the butter and sugar and then let it rest 3 times! It really helped to make these gluten free cookies light and fluffy but we wondered why.
The best explanation for what happens that I could find was on Paula Dean's website. She says,
"When butter and sugar are creamed together, the rough sugar crystals cut into the fat, creating air bubbles that are held in by it. These small air bubbles serve as a nuclei for leavening gases and steam. If the fat and sugar is creamed correctly, the entrapped air is more evenly dispersed around the fat leading to more even rising.
It’s important to remember that leaveners simply enlarge the air bubbles that already exist in the batter; they do not create more. A cookie or cake will rise when leaveners, such as baking soda and/or baking powder, are moistened and heated. They release carbon dioxide which gravitate to the air bubbles and expand them like very small balloons."
What else did we learn?
I stumbled on this great little animated video by Stephanie Warren. It's part of a TedEd Lesson. Have you seen that website yet? Great resource for homeschoolers! This lesson
Check out more of the You Are What You Eat series on TEDEd.
Happy Baking my scientist friends!
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