It's autumn which means that our days are going to start slowly becoming more indoors based and more importantly more kitchen based as we stay warm by the stove and make masses of baked goods! Getting your kids involved with cooking but particularly BAKING is such a great way for them to learn about all sorts of things! We use baking to teach math, science, art, English and problem solving all off the top of my head (not to mention home economics).
Whilst it is a great tool for teaching along with this comes a want to start experimenting and challenging recipes. If your children are anything like my daughter then they are going to insist that the already know how to bake, what to add and where it goes. Now, whilst she is technically right, she DOES know that eggs, butter and flour go in most cakes.... she doesn't know how much, what order or WHY we add these things. She already has the passion and wants to bake so we're going to be focusing on the WHY over the next few months with some of these kitchen based experiments.
Changing the amounts of raising agents (eggs, baking powder, yeast).
This is the easiest and most visually effective way to show what raising agents do in baking. This can be as simple as swapping plain flour for self-raising in a cookie recipe, fast action to plain yeast in bread or more elaborate like using whisked egg whites instead of baking powder in your cakes. To make it more scientific have a control group, make one batch following the recipe to the T and then compare how your experimental bakes have reacted. Are they the same size? Texture? Does it effect the taste of your bakes? What else do your children notice about the differences? Are they exactly the same?
This is Three Rivers Homesteads recipe for "Walls of Jericho" which is similar to a German Dutch Baby. Think, "What happens when you add baking powder and extra eggs to Yorkshire Pudding mix?"... A GIANT eggy Yorkshire pudding!
Changing the type of fat used.
This is one that I find really interesting. Everyone has their preferred fat to use in baking. Some like butter, others margarine, lard or oils. Personally I like to use oil for most bakes but particularly making a short crust pastry (I use my great grandmother in laws recipe and it always turns out perfect and can be easily patched and reworked without becoming too firm!). Choose a recipe that you love and try substituting the fat called for in the recipe with something new and see how it turns out! If it doesn't work, why not? What could you have done differently to make it work using this type of fat? If swapping from a solid to a liquid fat did you consider how the quantities might change? For example 100ml of melted lard is ~85g, that's a fairly large difference and something to think about when changing from solid to liquid.
GG's Pie Crust: 2 cups Flour, 1/8tsp Salt (Mix together), 2/3 cup flavorless Oil, 1/4 Milk (Mix together). Combine wet and dry ingredients, roll out and bake at 230C for 12 minutes! (I roll out this pastry between 2 pieces of grease proof paper or clingfilm to transfer to pie dish).
Different cooking, resting, rising and chilling times.
We all know that cooking times matter but when we read a recipe and are told to "leave it to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes" how many of us actually listen? Personally, very rarely. Or at least I USED to very rarely listen. Now I have seen the light that actually these resting times can have a huge impact on the structure of your bakes and I won't go back (unless I'm absolutely desperate and needs a sweet fix now). Aside from bread proofing times the bake I have found makes the biggest difference when you leave it to rest are chocolate chip cookies. Try making a batch of gooey, chocolate chip cookie dough and baking them slowly over 1-2 days. Try baking immediately, after 1 hour, 6 hours and 24 hours and see what a difference it makes (it's a big difference!). If you can resist them make sure to leave 1 cookie per baking time so you can compare your results.
It's important to chill shortbread so that the butter can solidify which stops the cookie from spreading so it maintains it's crumbly, delicious texture!
Flour types.
There are so many different types of flour out there but we tend to stick to what we know, plain, self raising and bread. But each type of flour has a different purpose and different properties! Using whole wheat flour requires longer kneading and raising times, pasta flour needs to be super fine, gluten free flour needs extra ingredients to make it work in the same way as gluten containing flours. The list goes on and on! If you have different types of flour in the house experiment with them. Firstly look to see if you can spot any differences, then follow a recipe word for word BUT switch out the kind of flour you use. I recommend a bread recipe to really see the difference.
Molecular Gastronomy.
Big, fancy word but really it's just fun food science! It sounds daunting but actually most things are very easy to do. This doesn't have to be expensive but it sure is a lot of fun! You can get kits (we like THESE ones by Dr Oetker) or buy the raw ingredients yourself however unless you plan to do it regularly this can get pricey and leave you with lots of extras that will clog up your cupboards (I still have bottles of contacts cleaner from the one and only time we made slime). Here is a list of our favorite kid friendly molecular gastronomy experiments:
Juicy bubbles: Also known as popping Boba. This is a technique called "Spherification" where you take a liquid and turn it into... you guessed it, a sphere! You can buy these "bubbles" premade, get baking kits like THIS one in most supermarkets or make them yourself! You will Need
Sodium Alginate
Calcium Lactate
Water
Smooth juice (sweet, strong flavors work best)
Pipette or something to slowly drop juice into your mixture
You can even make juice water balloons using THIS method which makes a fun (but occasionally messy) way to have your breakfast drink.
This is one the Dr Oetker science baking kits. So fun and so easy!
Crystal Candy: I first tried this in America during my youth and was AMAZED at the crystalized sugar on a stick. HOW did they do it? Well, now I know that it wasn't actually magic, just good old fashioned science and something that you can do at home! You will need:
Granulated sugar
Water
Food coloring (Optional)
Flavoring (Optional)
Thin lollipop sticks OR string
This experiment can take up to a week to complete so keep that in mind if you are wanting to make them for a specific event. That being said you will start to see crystals being formed after a couple of hours so there is some (almost) instant gratification. THIS is the recipe that we follow. It's simple, easy to follow and has a video alongside so you can't go wrong!
Ice Cream in a Bag: I recently saw a video with a certain cartoon pig who made this with her grandparents stitched with a video of someone making it in real life! It's not the creamy texture that you would get with an ice cream machine but it certainly does the job! I've seen THIS recipe recommended several times. It's an American recipe so to translate:
half and half = single cream.
This is such a fun (but cold) experiment to try with a delicious result! Try changing the flavors or switching fresh fruit for frozen, does it make a difference to the texture or freezing time of the ice cream? Is this ice cream worse, the same or better than ice cream you can buy at the store? I'll bet most kids say better!
Another fun ice cream experiment is ice cream (or sorbet) in a blender! We made a delicious citrus sorbet by freezing clementine segments and whizzing them all together. I recommend making this small serving batches. It was a little tricky to scoop after it had set again afterwards.
If you try any of these experiments or recipes please leave a comment to let me know how they turned out and what you or your kids learnt along the way! If you take any photos be sure to tag me on Instagram @reaching_for_rainbows so I can share the results
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