Johanna Speaks

Tuesday I got a violin from the Music Connection store in redding! I have always wanted a violin!! So on Sunday night, I made my own contract and wrote down why I want a violin! And I had a talk with my mom that night and told her if she would please sign here to get me a violin. :) She said she would think about it. And the next day was Monday and I asked if she had talked with dad about it and if I could get it. She said that maybe tomorrow (which would be Tuesday) after we watch Mrs.M who we watch every Tuesday we can go to the Music Connection and rent a violin. I was super excited!! The rent to own is what we wanted to do. So every month for us to rent a violin would be twenty-five dollars. That twenty-five dollars would be going to the violin's cost if we ever wanted to buy it at the end of six months. So my mom said that if I wanted to still stick with playing the violin after six months then she said I could buy it. 

The same day I got the violin I heh accidentally broke one of the violin strings and the bridge on the violin fell off. That all happened because I was trying to tune it! But it is normal for that to happen. And I feel like the string that I broke on the violin can be reached somehow. But I have no idea how to do that. So I am not going to touch it because if I do I might break another thing! So on Sunday, I wanted to take my violin to church because we are friends with somebody who has a daughter that plays violin and I wanted to ask her if she knew how to fix it or help me with it. I also have a sister-in-law who is a super good violinist but she lives in sacermento. But she sent me a video on how to tune my violin. That was super helpful! And I was thinking of doing online violin classes so she could teach me some violin from zoom or something. The Music Connection store can fix the violin probably for free but I know that is going to be looking pretty bad if I take it in a couple of days later after I rented it saying I broke something on the violin already. So I hope our friend at church can fix or help me with the violin. 

Here is a picture of the violin before I broke some stuff off of it:

It’s a beautiful violin!!

Today I am going to be talking about the science behind baking again! I found this video on Youtube about desserts, and what sugar does to them! My other blog post did talk about sugar but only talked about what it does to yellow cake. This time we are going to be talking about what sugar makes desserts sweet and what it does to them! This is going to be a very exciting blog post! So keep reading!

Here is the video:

Think of a dessert in that the only reason sugar is in it is for only sweetness and nothing else. Let's say cookies, for example, we only add sugar in them for sweetness and nothing else right? No actually, sugar in cookies is for the sweetness of course but it is also for it to be able to make air pockets in the butter and the sugar is little tiny crystals that need to dig in the butter or any type of solid fat, and it makes air pockets. And after you put the rest of the ingredients it becomes the batter, and when you put it in the oven those air pockets expand. After you take it out of the oven, it is nice and fluffy with a good texture to it! The sugar makes the cookies last a long time because it grabs the water molecules that are in the air and brings them to themselves and it stays nice moist inside the cookie or the cake. And cake you also add sugar and butter together and whip it up until the butter and sugar look nice and fluffy whipped together. Same thing with any type of solid fat like margarine or butter. So sugar doesn't just add sweetness to it, it makes it nice and fluffy with a good texture! Now back to the question, can you think of a dessert that the only reason sugar is in it is for only the sweetness and nothing else? 

Here's one:

Whipping cream. If you just whip whipping cream by itself with no sugar added, it has a good texture and a nice fluffiness to it. If you add sugar it just gives it a little sweetness to it. So lots of different desserts have sugar in them for sweetness but not only sweetness! Sugar has a role in so many desserts! Let's try and think of another one, hmm. Let's say, chocolate! Chocolate has sugar in it which adds sweetness to the chocolate. And that is the only role it plays in chocolate! 

How about we take a bowl of strawberries and add sugar to it and make it sweet so it's like a dessert? All it does is add sweetness. Actually no! It makes the fruit have this sauce to it. That sauce is there because when the sugar mixes with the strawberries, it's drawing all of the moisture out of the strawberries and creating a sauce! So it tastes sweet but also makes this type of sauce out of strawberries. 

Do you know what's also super interesting? What sugar does to ice cream! If you just have some water and you freeze it in your freezer it becomes solid ice, right? Well if you have sugar in ice cream and you put it in the freezer and after you are done it comes out nice and not solid like ice. Well if you add more sugar than the recipe says for making ice cream, and after you take it out of the freezer, it becomes more like a liquid. If you add less sugar than the recipe for ice cream says, then your ice cream will come out harder than ice cream is supposed to be and it won't be as soft and nice. That is super cool and super interesting! Never knew in so many ways sugar can do to desserts! 

The video goes on and on but I am going to stop here so I hoped you enjoyed reading about what sugar does to desserts!

On my microscope, I got some of our cane sugar which is the sugar crystals, and put it under there and see what it would look like. It looks pretty cool! I took a picture of it so you guys can see it! Here it is!

I have a video to show you. It is about the physics of baking. Today the video is about a baker who is going to be telling us how to make a yellow birthday cake but telling us the science behind it while making it! exciting right?! :) 

I will be writing down the science behind making a yellow birthday cake!

Here is the video:

When you are making a birthday cake you add, butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, buttermilk, flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. You add room-temperature butter first of course. The reason why you have to have room temperature butter is that after you put the butter next comes the sugar. Now Sugar is actually crystals that need to be able to dig like a shovel into the butter and make little air pockets. And if you have too cold and hard butter, the sugar can't dig into the butter because it would be too hard to be able to. The reason why you want the sugar to make air pockets is that when you put the batter in the oven, those air pockets expand and make the cake rise and be nice and fluffy. And that is because of the heat of the oven. And so do the baking powder and baking soda. But the sugar has a little part to make the cake nice and fluffy and have a nice texture to it! The rest of the ingredients make the cake nice and delicious! In the video, she actually only talked about the sugar and the butter, but I hope you did learn something about the butter because I sure did! It was actually super interesting of what sugar and butter do to each other! 

Also, I am going to be having a series of my " Science Behind Baking! " blog posts! Well, hopefully! :)

I got a $20-dollar Amazon gift card from Amazon! It was because I bought a heat lamp for my tortoise! That company that I bought from was pretty new and they want me to review the heat lamp, and if I do then they will give me a $20-dollar Amazon gift card! And they also wanted me to take photos and videos if I could. And I did take a video of how it works and some photos too! So now all I have to do is write a review about it! And my review will be all five stars because it works pretty well! 

I am probably going to buy a how-to-learn music book if Amazon has the right one. And if they don't, then I will probably get a bookholder. I want a bookholder because whenever I have to do something and have to get up or if I am making something in the kitchen, I have to put my book down and then I can't be reading it while I am making something. But if I did have a bookholder then I can be reading while I am cooking or something! 

Amazon sent me the news through the mail. Here is a picture of the letter they sent me:

I have been working on a mind map with my dad! A mind map is all the things you are doing in your life or some things that you want to do and then you write it down on poster paper or wrapping paper and have it on the blank side so you can write stuff down on it. So I have been writing down all of what I have been doing and some other stuff that I want to do in the future. My dad has been helping me with it for a while and then he said, to try doing it by myself so I did but I couldn't think of anything else to put down since I think we put everything already. So we rolled up the paper and then put my name on it so I can remember that it was mine because Simeon also did the same thing as me and they look similar. Well, he wrote his words in all black but I wrote mine in different colors. I like the colors in mine! :)