More like science on cookies and cakes.
You see how happy I was with my cookie research? hehe... I presented this at OBU Scholar's Day in April 2021.
This is part of my Honors program. The official name is Carl Goodson Honors Program, which is a program for anyone with >28 ACT and/or >3.5 GPA. The goal is to encourage students to follow their scholarly pursuits by adding 13 more credit hours to explore about any topic we wanted. (Come on, you've thought it, we are nerds.) 1 of those hours is for independent directed study. I have always loved food science, combining nutrition and chemistry together. I know that I will take 2 food science classes later on in my degree plan, but I want to go more in depth, more detailed information on my love of baking.
Originally, I wanted to go deep on cookies (chocolate chip specifically), cakes, and ice cream. Due to time constraint, I presented on cookies and cakes, and the ice cream became my thesis project for next year. Oh the fun I had with my research and experiment.
Let me list you the highlights of them all:
I am literally learning about one of my favorite thing in the world: desserts. Chocolate chip cookies. What not to enjoy?
Systematically baking something gives peace and an enormous sense of tranquility in my brain network. I spent one whole day on this. The leftovers were great.
Inviting my friends--yeah, it was not a super science-y/formal sensory evaluation test--to taste test my chocolate chip cookies = sharing my love of baking + feeding others = joy in my heart
I can actually apply what I learn to how I cook? Wow, I feel knowledgeable. Proud of my nerdiness.
What did I observe from my directed study?
Do you know that coffee enhances chocolate flavors because they have overlapping chemical molecules? Same thing apply to vanilla extract and the reason we put them in baked goods. Any overlapping flavor molecules will enhance that flavor even more.
People love chocolate chip cookie with coffee the most. They have the best flavor.
Using only white sugar on your cookies make them taste like caramel popcorn.
Also, respect to all graphic designers. Making that poster took the longest time because I was hard core utilizing color theory and moving things around so it looked proportional.
While 1-5 means different for each score category, 3 is the desirable score. For the ranking at the end, 1 means the most favorite type of cookie.
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