The Upper III students have been investigating Food Science in the Food Room this week. The brief is to investigate whether it is possible to reduce sugar in a cake and whether alternatives are viable and appetising.
The group considered the use of half the quantity of sugar, the usual amount of sugar, coconut sugar, brown sugar and what effect double the amount of sugar might have on the cakes.
Interestingly, most of the students voted brown sugar to be their favourite. Although brown and white sugar both contain equal amounts of carbohydrate, brown sugar also offers traces of micronutrients such as iron, calcium, zinc, copper, potassium, phosphorus and Vitamin B-6.
The students were very impressed with the brown sugar cakes and made comments such as “its like caramel”, “I love the smell” and “they are soft and fluffy and really different”. The least popular was double the sugar which made a very flat, crisp but greasy and sugary cake that was hard to eat.
Here is what Krisha in Upper III thought of the lesson.
On Monday, we investigated different types of sugar – and what differences they can make when baking.
In our pairs, we were each assigned with a different balance/type of sugar to bake with (e.g. too much sugar, too little sugar, coconut sugar, brown sugar etc.) to use in a simple recipe of a standard fairy cake recipe.
After we all made our different types of fairy cakes, we got the opportunity to test out the different sugars and see whether we could recognise what type of sugar it was. We all managed to do this correctly.
Next, we tried each of our fairy cakes, filling out a worksheet to write about our comments on different things regarding the cakes (e.g. the aroma, taste, texture, appearance etc.). I enjoyed this since it made me really think about the fairy cakes and what I personally thought about them.
This was fun because it was really interesting to taste each of the different cakes and matching it up with what sugar was used. This was a great chance to learn about the different types of sugar and how each one is different from the other (as well as how they are each made).
