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!
