The Great Cake Mistake

We finished up our bakery investigation at the beginning of January which transitioned into a quick study of kitchen chemistry. This was a great time to do our science fair project! We did some preliminary activities with states of matter and how they can change.

We also did some mixing of ingredients to make a trail mix snack and a fruit drink as we discussed types of ingredients that could still be seen and separated.

Our science fair project was all about cake! We decided to make a cake using all of the ingredients and then see what happened if we left and ingredient out. The students chose which ingredient they wanted to leave out and then we made 4 groups. They chose to leave out flour, milk, sugar and butter.

First we made the cake with all of the ingredients together.

Our question became: which cake would be most like the cake with ALL of the ingredients? 

Students made predictions (class consensus was the cake without butter would be most like the cake with all of the ingredients). Then students drew pictures of what their cake might look like.

Students worked with the group they signed up for to make the cake by leaving out the ingredient the chose (either milk, butter, flour or sugar). 

Each group's cake was baked. Here are pictures before and after and then the cake with ALL ingredients and the one with the missing ingredient together.

NO MILK

                             NO BUTTER

NO SUGAR

NO FLOUR

The students compared the cake with all of the ingredients to the one they made with the missing ingredient using sight, touch and taste. 

Then we made a chart to record our data.

We discussed the results. It seems that the cake without flour was chewy! The cake without butter wasn't as sweet and the cake without sugar was not sweet at all! They concluded that the cake made without milk was most like the cake with all of the ingredients. We then discussed the job of each ingredient in a recipe. 

This is our science fair board and the students' class journal. Once they had tasted their cake they described it on their prediction sheet as a conclusion.  Our project placed 1st in our division at our building. It went to the district fair Saturday and won first place! Way to go!