The Science of Sugar and the Chemistry of Baking

twice as good with Hadley and Delaney is brought to you by Mila Emma Besser forever better Mila and by cuties cute you can eat cuties and my kitchen works wherever we go perhaps where the party's at kitchen works as always don't forget the frizz for our rolls of Kim's cooking 1 wash your hand to ask them go for help especially with hot items shrub utensils and appliances 3 don't be afraid to try new minions especially Fair cream and 4 have fun few are rules 8 cooking twice as healthy and twice as good hi I'm half Li and I'm really neat and this is is good today Hallie and I are super excited to be in Boston Massachusetts don't worry about the signs of sugar in the chemistry and baking with the flour bakeries owner and pastry chef Joanne Chang miss Joann it's a perfect person from handling about the science of sugar and the chemistry of baking she graduated from Harvard College with a degree in applied mathematics before founding Flour Bakery and so she is naturally interested in the intersection between science and cooking so the first thing we're gonna make is devil's food chocolate cake do you like chocolate oh yes excellent so let me first explain a little bit about all the different ingredients that go into chocolate cake because if you think about it all of baking starts off with butter sugar flour chocolate all these ingredients but depending on how you mix them together you get either a cake or a tart or a cookie all sorts of different things and it all matters with the chemistry of the baking so what we have is we have butter and then we're gonna add some sugar and then we have flour and then this is our magic ingredient today this is baking soda baking soda is what's called a base and what a base does is it reacts to acid we have a couple acids in this recipe brown sugar is an acid and then over here we have chocolate which is melted and then we have creme fraiche which is sort of like yogurt and that's also an acid now what happens when you mix a base like baking soda with acids like brown sugar chocolate and creme fraiche is that all these bubbles start to form and the bubbles are what make the cake light and fluffy yeah so we're gonna watch this happen as we mix the cake together so if you don't have baking soda in this cake you end up with a really flat dense cake it doesn't really taste very good because you don't have any of the chemical reaction between the baking soda and the acids which makes it nice and light and fluffy it might sound like it's a dangerous thing but it's not at all what it is it's the pH level of an ingredient and so if something is really acidic or if something is basic it means it's different levels of pH in chemistry the pH scale allows chemists to categorize presents and bases placing acids and bases on a pH scale is a way to show how strong or weak they are the scam runs from zero to fourteen seven is neutral water has a pH of seven a pH of less than seven means the solution is acidic a pH of more than seven means it's a base the further away from seven in either direction the stronger the acid or the base is when you combine basic things with acidic things bubbles form and the bubbles are what caused the cake to rise and then when you cut into it it's really light and fluffy so when I first take the butter and put it in the bowl yeah but the whole thing in okay now what we're going to do is I want you to put the baking soda and the salt into the flour you never stumped both of them right and so the salts just for flavor and then the baking soda is what's gonna be the ingredient that reacts with all of the acids now take the wooden spoon and mix those ingredients together what you're gonna do is you're gonna put the brown sugar in here with the butter we love brown sugar brown sugar is delicious so did you know that brown sugar is just white sugar with a little bit of molasses mixed into it it is yeah that's what makes it brown is the molasses and that's what makes it acidic because molasses is intensive now we're gonna go ahead and add all the flour as well so the flour is gonna be what combines and binds all of the ingredients together so we're gonna get our mixer going I'm gonna lock it so that it doesn't fly up and then first I'm going to do what's called pulsing I'm just gonna turn it on off and on off not okay so now that it started to be coated in a little bit of the flour we can turn it on and now we're gonna mix it until all of the butter sugar and flour mix together so while that's going we're gonna get the rest of our ingredients together so we need two eggs and then we need 2 egg yolks okay do you know how to do that we do so two eggs you can add the yolk yeah perfect now we're gonna add the chocolate is melted chocolate desires the melted chocolate bars and some water and some cocoa powder so this is creme fraiche which is a lot like sour cream or yogurt and we're gonna whisk all of that together until it's turn really well combined it'll be like a chocolatey mixture yeah it's a chocolatey mixture with eggs and the creme fraiche and see it gets a little bit creamy looking that looks beautiful look how well combined that is so now we're gonna finish making the cake batter what you're gonna do is you're gonna put about half of that chocolate mixture in here with the butter sugar yeah just about half will it happen if you put the whole thing in there if you put the whole thing in then when we try to combine the butter and the sugar and the flour with the chocolate it will get all slushy and I'll have a hard time mixing together yeah yeah that's perfect so we just put in half and I'm gonna turn that on low in and now we're gonna start mixing the two in the two groups of ingredients together and that's when the chemical reaction happens when you mix an acid and a base together begin a reaction that occurs is often referred to as a proton transfer that's because in chemistry acids our proton donators and bases are proton acceptors so now I'm gonna turn it up just a little bit so we can mix it all together you can see how the batter is coming together really beautifully and now that it's all mixed in we can add the rest of the liquid ingredients I'll set all of it the whole thing and now I'm going to turn it up I'm gonna turn it all the way up and now we have beautiful cake batter put all that in the cake pan now what happens after we put the batter in the cake pan we're gonna put the cake batter in a hot oven the heat of the oven is gonna cause all of those little bubbles that could be created with the baking soda it's gonna cause them all to get a little bit bigger this looks great why don't I scrape the rest of this into the cake pan and then we are going to get this cake ready for the oven so now we're gonna make another cake but this time we're not gonna put the baking soda in it to see what happens we put butter in the bowl pancake brown sugar exactly the salt into the flour put that in there but no baking soda remember last time we had baking soda this time I'm just gonna mix the salt in so I'm gonna go ahead and put all of this in here okay so while this is mixing I'm gonna get the eggs ready so we have two eggs two egg yolks the creme fraiche in chopped and the chocolate so you girls did a great job of that last time so I'm gonna have you do that this time so remember all of the ingredients are the same exactly the same the only thing we're missing is that any bitty bit of baking soda okay half of that goes in here that's good perfect again yep so you see it so much the same as the other batter at this point you can't really tell okay let's add the rest so the final step is we mix in the last of that okay so now the batter's all come together but you can see it's a little bit looser - which is probably also because the chocolate was a little bit warmer and we're gonna put them in this oven right behind us the one without baking sodas on the left the one with baking soda is on the right about 35 40 minutes to bake our cakes are ready oh these look beautiful that is the one with the baking soda here's the second one yeah laughs let's try some of this cake one of each so a little bit warm but I think you'll like it yeah that looks good I feel bad making you eat this but you need to try it so you can taste the difference there's a teach thing he doesn't have as many air but looks nice fluffy which one would you rather eat probably this one the one with bacon and why because it's more fluffy and area it's just ones mark Dominion chili that's exactly right so we learned when we bake your cake with baking soda we are actually combining like assets and light bases and heating them to speed up their chemical proton transfer reaction and the resulting solution is a moist fluffy cake now on top of that cake is icing which is made using sugar so next up we're going to learn about the science of sugar now we are going to turn from the chemistry baking to the science of sugar what do you think sugar does mostly in a dessert is it actually it makes things sweet exactly but it turns out sugar has so many more things that it does other than just adding sweetness and that is the science of sugar so the first example we have is sorbet this is grapefruit sorbet that has no sugar whatsoever it's just grapefruit juice and water you tell me what it feels like does it feel like sorbet that you want to eat like I probably couldn't eat it I would want to eat that this version has 1/3 2/3 it's a little bit better but it still kind of seems pretty hard so then the next one is red with 2/3 cup sugar so this one seems like it's a little bit softer you wanna taste it and see sure so then let's go to this version which has her and I move it up closer to you guys and that's very soft of that this has 1 cup sugar so then we wanted to see what happens if you add too much sugar this one has 1 and 1/3 cup it's like soup it's not even sort of a anymore so all of that is just by adding sugar to sorbet so in addition to providing sweetness a second function of sugar and cooking is to depress freezing points which makes desserts like sorbet more edible so what I want you girls to do is take some of these beautiful strawberries and then let's cut the strawberries let's say in half then keep your fingers back exactly you want to keep your fingers back now what we're gonna do is we're gonna add some sugar to the strawberries now sugars regice scopic so it's going to draw out all of the water that's in the strawberries and then it's gonna mix and make its own sauce that you've created a little sauce in the bottom wow look at all of that sauce that's all from the sugar drawing out the moisture that's in the strawberries you must be very now another magical thing that sugar does is it strengthens egg white bones so let me explain what that means we have some egg whites here I'm gonna put a little bit of egg white into the mixer are we making right we're gonna start making meringue exactly but what I first want to do is show you what happens when you don't put any sugar in the meringue so see how it's all yellowy and slowly as the whisk is whipping up two egg whites it's adding air to the egg you're right it's getting all fluffy and now this is just egg white whipped up and made into an egg white foam these egg whites are actually made up of protein strands and the protein strands get all stretched out when we whip them and they hold all of this air so without sugar you see that it's kind of fluffy now we're gonna make exactly the same thing but we're gonna add sugar we're gonna add some egg whites now you can start adding it but just add it little by little so if you add it's not bad but it has to mix a lot longer because you're adding it too fast and then the sugar takes a longer time to make this is like a soft meringue but you can see it's so much more Rossi so that's the difference adding sugar is that it makes it glossy and it holds the air better versus this one which doesn't have sugar so I have another thing to show you that sugar does in baking so I'm gonna bring these two cakes over if you want to get all that other stuff out of the way okay so when you mix sugar and butter together what happens is what's called creaming so that's the first step in making a cake so I made two cakes this one was made by creaming the butter and sugar see how soft it is nice and fluffy this one is melted and I don't know if you can see the difference but can you see how it's a little bit denser it's harder and it's damp because it doesn't have as many air bubbles and this one's a lighter and fluffier and it tastes different well let's find out this is really good it's not make more chewy it's like gummy sugar crystals also have sharp edges so during the creaming process they create air pockets and help make the cakes more fluffy so we have learned that sugar has many roles in baking and addition to providing sweetness it also depresses freezing points attracts flutter strengthen structures and creates air pockets now we've covered sugars scientific rules we're focusing on how sugar changes faces at different temperatures and as these dangers create opportunities for terrifically sweet desserts so when you mix sugar and water together and then when you heat it up it goes through different phases first there's what's called the red phase and what that means is that when you heat up sugar and water and then you take the mixture and you put it in some cold water you get a thread of sugar so that's why it's called the red stage so you use that to do things like sweetened iced tea so the next stage after thread stage is what's called soft ball stage and what that means is when you take the sugar syrup and you put it in some cold ice water it turns into a soft ball and you use that to make things like fudge then when you heat up the sugar even newer it goes into what's called firm ball stage okay I take that sugar syrup and you put it in some ice water it turns into a firm little ball and that's what makes something like a caramel candy so then you take the sugar even further and it goes into hardball stage and that's when you take some of the sugar syrup you put it in some ice water and it turns into a hard ball and you use that to make marshmallows so the other stages of sugar and the other phases are after hardball after firm ball then you go to what's called soft crack and then it means when you take the syrup and you put it in some ice water it actually starts to crack it becomes almost crunchy and crispy like so after stop crack then come to hard crack and that's when you take the sugar syrup then you put it in some cold ice water and it turns really hard and that makes things like lollipops now you take the sugar even further and it starts to turn brown and then it goes into caramelization and then you can make all sorts of things with caramelized sugar can you make paintings exactly so we're gonna make some pralines with some caramelized sugar we're gonna take sugar through all the different phases that we just talked about all the way to caramel and then we're gonna add some nuts to it that's gonna make praline the first part of the craley we're just gonna put some sugar here in a pot and then I'm gonna add just a little bit of water and you can see that the sugar is now mixing in with the water and now as it slowly comes to temperature and as the water starts to boil we're gonna see all the different phases I know what changes that so the easiest way to tell what stage it's at is to use a thermometer you just stick a candy thermometer in there and you watch it as it goes through all the different temperature stages so we're gonna let it go just a little bit darker I was gonna throw some almonds in here today caramel face now it's at caramelization exactly and now I'm gonna swirl it and swirl it and coat all of those almonds yeah it's really gonna not look good okay and now I'm gonna pour it out onto this baking tray you're gonna be really careful cuz it's really hot like spread this out a little bit so it's too hot to eat right now we definitely can't eat it right now it's gonna become really hard and then we're gonna pop it out of the pan and then we're gonna eat it now we have our praline I think our praline is ready you can already there you go whoa it's when you eat some of the nuts in it mmm so we're waiting for this sugar to caramelize we're gonna bring it all the way up to the point where it turns golden brown again but this time we're not gonna put almonds in it we're not gonna make praline instead we're gonna make what's called spun sugar which is really fun I'm really excited to show you guys so let me turn off the stove so now it's still too hot so we have to wait for it it's already caramelized but now we're gonna wait until it cools down a little bit and as it cools down it's gonna get thicker and then we're gonna use it to make the spun sugar now you can see it's starting to cool do you see that thread there's no one looks like a yeah you can touch that part and now it's all hard because it's totally cool how did you make the pets so the puffs are called Pat a choux it's a batter that you make by mixing butter and flour and water together in a pot just like this and then when you mix it all together you put it in a mixer and then you add eggs and then you scoop out the batter and bake it and you get these puffs so okay so watch me carefully I'm gonna lift this up I'm gonna flick it over this thing okay I'm gonna go back and forth so I don't hit either you or me you want to try okay okay so you want to be really careful because it's really hot nice look at that how many times did you done this oh my gosh I can't even count I've probably done this hundreds of times so you just keep doing that over and over and over again until you have the whole thing covered in sugar you girls did a lovely job it's all covered in spun sugar I have other cakes that I baked and we're gonna actually frost them and we're gonna make buttercream using all the things we learned about the stages of sugar and we're gonna frost this cake which is made with baking soda with the buttercream that we're gonna make so I've got more sugar and more water in the pot and we're gonna bring it to a boil so while this is heating up I'm gonna put egg whites back in our mixer bowl I'm just gonna cut off the top of this cake we're not anything there top we're not gonna use the top this is what you get to snack on when you're making a cake look good yeah there can you hear the sugar and it's starting to sound different so I'm gonna do is test the sugar temperature I don't have a thermometer so instead I'm gonna freeze my finger and I'm gonna plunge it into the hot syrup we shouldn't get it you shouldn't do it at home you're right there and then I put it into here and then look at that and then I make a little ball so that tells me that the sugar is ready so I poured some of the syrup into the egg whites so now you can see now you can see that the sugar has made the meringue nice and white and fluffy yeah and now we're gonna add some butter to this and make a butter cream that we're gonna use to frost the cake and your die just throw it in there okay girls look at the buttercream let me see how beautiful it is now now it's silky and smooth so we're gonna do what's called a crumb coat we're gonna cover the whole cake with a layer of frosting that's just gonna seal in all the crumbs so once we cover the whole thing with a thin layer of frosting then we're gonna put the rest of the frosting on top so it's gonna be like an all white and rocky it'll be white on the outside and brown on the inside we make it at the bakery and we call it midnight chocolate cake because it's all dark like it's dark outside when it's midnight and we actually frost it with a chocolate frosting are we gonna put something on the top you know what we have those beautiful strawberries I mean with this stem you know it's kind of pretty sometimes with the stems do you want to sure that looks nice and then maybe all around that's beautiful it looks really pretty on the outside it looks really pretty on the top maybe like that nice job yeah thank you it's a wonderful time today we learnt so much about the chemistry of baking and the science of sugar we'd like to thank miss Joann for teaching us all about how weak acids mix through the bays create a proton transfer and result in a fluffy cake and for demonstrating to us that sugar has many different roles in addition to just making a dessert sweet we had a great time seeing how the different phase changes of sugar at different temperatures make it possible to create a bunch of fun sweet desserts today is proof that every time you bake your chemist and every time you cook you're practicing science cooking and science now that more information about that this is prepared today's show including no less than ingredients and the rest of it please visit us at twice as good show twice as good with Hadley and Delaney is brought to you by Mila in my Besser forever better neva and by cuties cute you can eat QT and white kitchen works wherever we go perhaps where the party's at kitchen works you

Channel: Twice as Good Show

Views: 105,267

Rating: 4.7975707 out of 5

Keywords: cooking show for kids, Cooking Show (TV Genre)

Id: XTcaAZYUJns

Length: 26min 46sec (1606 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 11 2015