FOODucation: Educating Young Minds! A Workshop for Girls Inc!

On Saturday April 11th, Chapman’s Food Science Program had the pleasure of hosting an interactive educational experience for Girls Inc! High school students from different regions were brought to Chapman University to learn about Food Science thanks to the collaboration between FSNSA and Girls Inc female leaders Christie Pearce, Amanda Perl and Cathleen Chase. The girls were actively engaged in all aspects of the event all the way through an information session on college admission. It was great to see how excited the students were to learn about scientific principles behind ice cream, our taste perception and making gummy balls! In addition, the girls that attended asked insightful questions to gain a deeper understanding of the science as well as the application process. I have no doubt these young women will become successful professionals in any career they choose! Read more about the specific demonstrations as well as thoughts by FSNSA members involved with the workshops below!

To start us off, the organizer of the event, Dawn Kane, gave a very informative presentation about what food science is all about.  A brief description of the many, wonderful fields of food science were described which sparked the interest of all the girls! After a short question and answer period, the girls were divided into four groups and were sent off to the various classrooms to get some hands on food science experience! 

The demo led by Emma Gottschall focused on sensory science. The girls were first asked to try two samples of colored seltzer, one purple and one pink. Without any hints about the flavors most girls believed the purple sample tasted like grape, while there was a mixed consensus about the pink drink. The girls were surprised to learn that the purple juice was actually strawberry-kiwi! While most people assume that taste is the only impact on how we perceive flavor, the girls learned that your expectations also have a huge impact on how a food tastes. While some attributes like color or size can be controlled in sensory testing, other factors cannot be controlled. Emma took the demonstration one step further to help the girls understand the role of genetics in taste. Participants were given PTC strips containing phenylthiocarbamide. When tasting PTC, approximately 75% of the population perceive a highly bitter taste based on a specific gene.  The remainder of the population perceive a slight bitter taste or none at all. Emma said “The girls were extremely interested in learning about the science behind sensory testing as well as what it’s like to be a taste tester. After all, who wouldn't love to get paid to eat?!”

Another demo was led by Sabrina Davis and focused on pigments from red cabbage! Sabrina said “The girls enjoyed seeing the changing colors of cabbage extract, from purple to red and from red to blue!” Extracts from the cabbage can be used as a pH indicator. The pigment that gives the vegetable its color is called anthocyanin which undergoes a color change under acidic and basic conditions. The demo showed the process of extraction of the cabbage pigments, as well as the solutions that change its color!

In this demo Akanksha Jain is educating the girls on how aliginate, a substance from algae, can be used to form gummies! In the photo above, Logan Kane represents a “calcium ion” which is required for the alginate to form a gel network and produce a gummy!

In another demo on Microbiology, led by Sophia Pollack, the girls got a chance to look at E.coli and Bacillus sp. which are two common causes of food borne Illness. They saw a penicillin slide and were told about the history of antibiotics and how penicillin was accodently discovered by Alexander Flemming, and they looked at Euglena, a common protist found in fresh and salt water (not pathogenic).  Next the girls Learned the acronym FAT TOM to remember the requirements needed for growth of microbes.  We finished up by a discussion on how to prevent microbial growth in food using hurdle technology and safe handling practices.

One of the tastiest demonstrations was led by Charles Quinto and focused on ice cream! Ice cream is considered an oil-in-water emulsion, which means that the product is made up of tiny particles of water distributed in oil. The oil is from the different fats present in the ice cream base from the milk component. Ice cream is also considered a foam as air is whipped into the ice cream causing an increase in volume. The process of whipping the ice cream base to increase volume is known as overrun. In the food industry, ice cream has a maximum allowed percentage of being 100% overrun – or allowing a twofold increase in volume. Large ice crystals in ice cream produce a texture that is icy and unpleasant when the expectation is a creamy product. To prevent the formation of large ice crystals, we used liquid nitrogen to rapidly freeze the ice cream base. This quick freezing action prevents large ice crystal formation and therefore produces a nice creamy ice cream! In the picture, Emma is carefully adding liquid nitrogen while whipping the ice cream base (dressed in proper protective equipment! Safety first!) while the girls get to decorate their ice cream with food coloring and sprinkles!

As the eventful day came to a close, the girls heard from a representative of Chapman to learn about the application process, majors offered and how standardized testing scores are used. After learning about what it takes to get into Chapman, the girls were given a tour around campus before heading back home with newfound knowledge in Food Science!

It was also great to see that a current FSNSA volunteer, Katrina Jully, could personally relate to Girls Inc. Katrina said “I had the opportunity to be a part of Girls Inc back when I was in middle school. So for me to be a part of it again, but as a “team leader,” was a wonderful way to complete the circle. I am so glad to see that Girls Inc has grown over the years and continues to be a wonderful organization that supports the development of girls into strong, bold, and confident women.”

It was a great event and we look forward to continuing the tradition of educating young minds! If you want to know more about the chemistry behind these experiments, or just food science in general, follow our blog, e-mail the Food Science Program Assistant Sonja Montiel (smontiel@chapman.edu), or join the Food Science and Student Nutrition Association (FSNSA)!

Thanks for reading!

Charles Quinto

Use Science to Improve Your Cookies!

One of my favorite food bloggers, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt from Serious Eats, has done a fantastic article about the science of cookies, specifically those of the chocolatus chipis species. He covers everything from the difference between using melted and creamed butter to egg yolks vs. egg whites to dough temperature and everything else in between. You can find the original article here along with a recipe but in order to get you into the kitchen faster, I present to you the condensed version:

Do not replace butter with other fats (eg. shortening, margarine, lard). The proteins in butter are essential to the flavors in your dough.

Melted butter will produce denser cookies while creamed butter will make cakier cookies.

Cookies made with browned butter will come out softer because of less gluten development. However this may cause it to break more easily.

A higher proportion of egg white to egg yolk will result in a taller cookie while a higher egg yolk to egg white ratio will result in a more dense, brownie-like cookie.

White sugar is pure crystallized sucrose. Brown sugar is mostly sucrose, but also contains glucose and fructose (more hygroscopic than sucrose) with trace minerals that give it flavor and a slightly acidic pH.

Cookies made with 100% white or 100% brown sugar

Cookies made with slightly acidic brown sugar cause them to rise more and spread less because the brown sugar reacts with baking soda (a base) to make bubbles that provide lift. Cookies made with white sugar do not leaven, but they are more crisp because sucrose does not hold water molecules as well as glucose and fructose.

Incorporate your chocolate chips halfway through the wet-dry mixing process to avoid over-mixing your dough. Excess kneading causes more gluten formation which can produce tough cookies.

Incorporating chocolate into dough that has been heated to 80 degrees F will allow some chocolate to melt, leaving chocolate trails in the cookie, while still leaving chunks intact to melt into pools of liquid delicious.

That $25 bottle of Madagascar bourbon vanilla extract is indistinguishable from imitation vanilla flavor.

Baking your cookies at a lower temperature will result in more spreading and more even cooking. But don't go too low, otherwise there will be not textural contrast between the edges and the center.

Leaving dough in the refrigerator overnight will allow time for flour proteins and starches to breakdown and rearrange so that your cookies have a richer flavor and more better browning.

Cookies rested for four hours and two days before baking

HAPPY HOLIDAY BAKING!

All photos: Serious Eats

FOODucation: Cookie Chemistry!

Hey everyone,

The weekend is drawing to a close and finals begin tomorrow! I hope you've all been making some great progress studying, and if not, there's still time! Though this is probably covered in Food Chemistry, here's some interesting information on the chemistry of baking cookies!

I've included a video that's more informative than this post and it includes some cool animation! If you don't have the time to watch the video or you don't want to be tempted with yet another holiday sweet treat, I've summarized a few key points about the video!

 

• The egg is what holds the batter together during the cooking process to prevent it from expanding into neighboring cookies (though that just means a larger cookie if it does!). As the temperature increases, proteins in the egg(s) denature becoming tangled to create a solid network providing structure to the cookie
• At 212 F the water in the dough becomes steam and is part of the reason why the cookies rise
• Baking soda/powder break down carbon to produce carbon dioxide to puff up the cookie by leaving holes making it lighter
• Caramelization! Sugars break down to become a nice brown, fragrant liquid full of taste and aroma!
• Maillard reaction! Involves sugars, egg protein and flour to produce that toasty flavor and nice brown color (mmmmm delicious!)

Want more info? Here are some tips to alter your cookie (more chemistry is given in the article/video)

• Melted butter in raw dough makes the cookie flatter, wider and more chewy
• Cold butter chunks in dough makes the cookie lighter and more fluffy
• Baking powder in place of baking soda makes the cookie more fluffy
• Dark sugars increase the cookie flavor and aroma

Here's the full article:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/12/03/248347009/cookie-baking-chemistry-how-to-engineer-your-perfect-sweet-treat

Best of luck this week!

- Charles Quinto