Nothing goes better together than baking and math! With this post, you can learn about fractions while cooking up a delicious biscuit.
Let’s get started!
Materials:
Ingredients: flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, butter, milk, eggs
Tools: bowl, measuring cup, teaspoon, tablespoon, glass or cookie cutter, baking sheet, parchment paper, oven
Time Estimated:
45 min
Directions:
Imagine you are baking biscuits for 12 friends, but the recipe only makes 8! You could double the recipe, but then you’d have too many biscuits. How can you change the recipe to make exactly 12 biscuits? (Answer: multiply by 1.5)
Here is the original recipe; change the measurements so it will make 12 biscuits.
2 cups flour → _______ cups flour (Answer: 3)
2 tablespoons sugar → _______ tablespoons sugar (3)
4 teaspoons baking powder → _______ teaspoons baking powder (6)
½ teaspoon salt → _______ teaspoon salt (¾)
3 tablespoons butter → _______ tablespoons butter (4.5)
⅔ cup milk → _______ cup milk (1)
1 egg → _______ egg (1.5)
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F
First, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.
Then, cut the cold butter into pieces and add them to the flour mixture. With your hands, crumble the butter in the flour mixture until the pieces of butter are about the size of bread crumbs (this will take about 5 minutes).
Next, slowly pour in the milk as you mix to create a ball of dough. The dough should be slightly sticky. You may need not need all the milk, so pour it in slowly and carefully.
Put the dough on a clean floured surface and knead with your hands until the dough does not stick to your fingers. Then press the dough into a circle one inch thick.
Take a glass, dip the rim in flour, and then use the rim to cut out your biscuits from the dough. Dip the glass in flour before cutting out each biscuit.
Transfer biscuits to a baking sheet with parchment paper. Roll the remaining dough into another circle and repeat until the dough is gone.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and a tablespoon of milk together. Then, cover the top of each biscuit with the egg wash.
Bake at 425 F for 12-15 minutes or until the biscuits are golden brown.
Remove from the oven and let cool.
Enjoy with butter and jam!
Think Like A Scientist:
Explain in your own words how you multiply fractions on paper.
Explain in your own words how you multiply fractions in your head.
Do you do the same things or different things in your head and on paper?
Is it easier for you to multiply by 1.5 or multiply by 2? Why?
Why don’t we need to bake the biscuits 1.5 times longer, or make the oven 1.5 times hotter?
How It Works:
We are scaling the recipe by a factor of 1.5, meaning that we are making 1.5 many more biscuits than the original recipe makes because we want 12 biscuits, and 8 (what the original recipe makes) x 1.5 = 12
To do this, we need to multiply the amount of every ingredient by 1.5. In the video, we multiply fractions both on paper and in our heads.
Looking for more fun at home STEM activities for your young scientist? Check out our workbook full of exciting science experiments and empowering activities!
