Making & Baking

    
This is my second action project for my class, Food. During this unit, we’ve been learning about logarithms, the Cooking Hypothesis, the evolution of humans, the process of baking, and a lot more. We’ve baked cookies, brownies, and bread in class, while changing something about the recipe, whether it be the leavening agent, the emulsifier, or the temperature. We also went on a Field Experience to Uncommon Ground, a brewery and restaurant, to learn about brewing beer and how they sustain their crops while using them for their restaurant. Overall, I really enjoyed this unit.

For my action project, I used a cookie recipe.


Research Question: How does changing the leavening agent affect the recipe?

Hypothesis: I think changing the leavening agent from baking soda to self-rising flour won’t change or very slightly change the cookie, as self-rising flour already has everything the cookie needs to rise.

Materials and Procedure



1/2 cup of softened butter

1/2 cup of white sugar

1/2 cup of brown sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 1/2 cups of self-rising flour

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2. Add butter, brown sugar, and white sugar into a bowl and stir

3. Add egg and stir

4. Add vanilla extract and stir

5. Dissolve baking soda in water, add salt, and stir

6. Put in the flour and mix till doughy

7. Repeat the process with self-rising flour, not adding baking soda or self-rising flour

8. Put dough on the baking pan and spread a couple inches

9. Put in the oven for twenty minutes

10. Once finished, leave cookies out to cool for 5 minutes


(Top is baking soda, the bottom is self rising flour)

  • Before

  • After
  • Observations & Data

  • Independent Variable

    Time Baked

    Dependent Variable #1: Consistency

    Dependent Variable #2: Texture

    Dependent Variable #3: Leavening

    Baking Soda

    20 minutes

    Cookie is slightly harder than self-rising flour and requires more force to pull apart.

    Cookie is less crumbly, somewhat hard exterior

    5cm

    Self-Rising Flour

    20 minutes

    Cookie is slightly softer than baking soda, and requires less force to pull apart.

    Cookie is more crumbly, with a slightly softer exterior than baking soda

    5cm


  • Results & Further Questions
  • My hypothesis was correct as the differences between the cookies were minimal. As for the taste, the differences were also very small. The self-rising flour cookie tasted slightly better. I wonder what would happen if I used premade self-rising flour. I made the flour myself, so I wonder if any changes would've occurred if I used it.
  • Overall, this was a really fun experiment. I've never baked cookies before, and I have very little experience baking. However, I think the cookies tasted good. I had a lot of fun making these, and I hope I can refine this process if I try it again.

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