Tis the season to eat cookies!
Did you know that baking is actually a science? We often see eggs, flour, sugar, baking soda, and more in our dessert recipes… but why? What does each ingredient do to make your recipes sooo delicious?
Materials:
3 ½ cups flour, 1 ½ cups sugar, 2 eggs, 2 sticks (16 tbsp) softened butter, 1 ½ tsp vanilla extract, 1 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt, medium sized mixing bowl, mixer/whisk/spoon, sprinkles to decorate (optional), cookie cutters or knife to cut out holiday shapes
Time Estimated:
1 hour
Directions:
Preheat oven to 400ºF
Crack the two eggs into your mixing bowl
Add softened butter, sugar, and vanilla extract to the mixing bowl and mix together
Slowly mix in flour until fully incorporated
Mix in baking powder
Mix in salt
Combine batter into a bowl
Roll out the dough to ¼ inch thickness
If dough has warmed during rolling, cool for for 10 minutes
Lightly bake a cookie sheet
Cut dough into holiday shapes
Place cookie shapes at least 1 inch apart on the cookie sheet
Decorate the cookies with sprinkles as desired
Bake for 8-12 minutes or until golden (oven temperatures may vary so check on your cookies every few minutes)
Remove the cookies from the baking sheet to cool and then enjoy!
Think Like A Scientist:
How would changing the amount of flour or baking soda affect how the cookies turn out?
How It Works:
Making cookies actually involves chemistry! When we combine all of the ingredients and bake them, multiple chemical reactions occur! For example, butter is made of fat and water. When we beat the butter, it creates air pockets in the dough, which helps make the cookies fluffy. When the butter is heated, it melts and the water particles in it evaporate.
Sugar makes the cookies sweet, but did you know that sugar also helps bind water molecules to make the cookies moist as well? How cool!
Flour acts to help the butter and sugar stick together. It is able to act like a glue because it absorbs water. So, if you add too much flour to your mix, your cookies will be dry. If you add too little flour, the cookies will be runny and won't rise properly.
Eggs change from a liquid to a solid when heated to help hold your cookies together, and baking powder helps the cookies rise when we heat them.
All of these ingredients mixed together create the perfect cookie!
Looking for more fun at home STEM activities for your young scientist? Check out our workbook full of exciting science experiments and empowering activities!
