Fun Recipes to Learn Math and Science!

Cooking Ratios

Have you ever tried cooking from scratch? It can be quite intimidating - until you learn a few of the basic tricks! For example, experienced cooks and bakers know that cooking from scratch usually requires following a set of ratios. These ratios give the right amount of each ingredient to make the dish just right.

According to Shirley Corriher, of Fine Cooking, “In cakes, the protein ingredients, which are the flour and eggs, are the major structure-builders. They’re essentially what holds the cake together. Fat and sugar do the opposite; they actually soften the cake’s structure, providing tenderness and moisture. If you have too much structure, the cake will be tough and dry. If you add too much of the moistening, softening fats and sugars, the cake might not set, and could be soupy.”

To illustrate, for cakes the ratios would be perfect like this, while several other dishes rely upon ratios like this.

To start with, beginners should have success in making the 1-2-3-4 cake explained by Brianna Riddock. The 1-2-3-4 cake is an ideal example of following ratios of ingredients to create your perfect cake. It’s a basic yellow cake which can be made for almost any occasion, and generally breaks down to:

To this, you’ll want to add vanilla extract, milk, and baking powder. See amounts below.

Here are the steps and ingredients:

1-2-3-4 Cake

Ingredients:

How to Make It:

Step 1: Preheat oven to 350°. Coat 2 (8x8) baking pans with baking spray and dust with a thin layer of flour.

Step 2: In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, beat the softened butter at medium speed, gradually adding sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy, about 4-5 minutes. Mix eggs, one at a time, into the butter mixture.

Step 3: In a separate bowl, sift together the flour and baking powder. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, about one cup at a time, adding in milk after each cup; mix until just combined. Mix in vanilla extract.

Step 4: Divide the batter evenly between 2 (8x8-inch) square baking pans and bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool 20 minutes before serving.

The Science of Fermentation

Fermenting foods involves both encouraging the growth of favorable micro-organisms while preventing the growth of those that lead to spoilage. This is done when making a wide variety of foods from wine and bread to pickles and cheese.

For bread, yeasts (single-celled organisms) are added to the dough, which feed off sugars and break them into carbon dioxide, resulting in the dough rising. In some breads, alcohol helps bread rise, and in others, baking soda serves as a leavening agent.

Here are a couple of simple bread recipes to make with your kiddos, each using a different leavening agent. For an intro to the material, Raddish Kids has a printable section followed by ideas for science, history, and language arts lessons on Irish soda bread, leaveners, etc. - and here’s a video on the subject. Feel free to create and fill in with your own creative educational ideas on the recipes below!

Beer Bread

This beer bread recipe is super easy with just 6 ingredients:

Prep: Grease a loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray or melted butter and preheat the oven.

Mix. Grab a large mixing bowl and combine everything but the melted butter. The batter is made from the first 5 ingredients, poured into the prepared pan and the butter is melted and drizzled on top which creates a crunchy crust. For a softer crust, you can mix the melted butter in with the batter. Personally, I am a fan of the crunchy texture!

Bake. It takes about 50 minutes or so to bake, but with variances in ovens you want to check it at 45 minutes or bake up to an hour. You’ll know it’s done when the top is golden brown and the sides pull away from the pan. The toothpick test is always a giveaway – just insert one into the center of the loaf and if all you get are moist crumbs, it’s ready!

Banana Bread

If you’ve got any over-ripe bananas around (at least 3 or 4), you can throw an easy batch of banana bread together for breakfast, snacks, or dessert. If you’re pressed for time, grease up 12 muffin cups instead and reduce your cooking time to 15 minutes - you’ll have easy grab-and-go banana muffins instead of a loaf of bread. Either way, banana bread is a fragrant, tasty treat you can enjoy anytime!

Here’s an easy peasy recipe from Allison at Celebrating Sweets:

Ingredients:

Instructions

Pan sizes: The recipe instructions are for a 9x9 square pan, but you can also use the following:

Learning Fractions and Measurements through Basic Cooking

For students learning their fractions, cooking can be a beginner math lesson. Start by looking over all the mixing and measuring tools (spoons, cups, and pitchers or bowls) to see which measurements are displayed on the side. Then let the kiddos scoop and pour the various measurements in (to avoid wasting too much, just do one ingredient a time in a large mixing bowl) to begin to understand how fractions work in cooking.

Homeschool Scientist has free printables on the subject for anyone interested in using worksheets as a backup for this lesson.

Here’s a fun video to get you started: Math in the Kitchen

No Bake Chocolate Cookies

Worried about the utility bill during quarantine time? Skip the stove completely with this easy no bake cookie recipe:

Ingredients:

Instructions:

Make lunch together and observe simple math and fractions in the preparation. This mouth-watering French bread pizza recipe is easy enough for kids to do with adult supervision. (You may need to do the cutting for them, depending upon the ages.) Here is a video of the New Sky Kids making French bread pizza, to give your kiddos an idea of what they need to accomplish with this recipe.

French Bread Pizza

Ingredients:

Ingredients:

First, cut a loaf of French bread in half, lengthwise. Place it on a baking sheet and toast it in a 400°F preheated oven for 5 to 8 minutes.

Once the bread has been toasted, take a garlic clove and rub it along the top surface of the bread. It turns it into a nice, garlic-infused bread! Is it necessary? No. You can skip this step if you wish.

Next, spread pizza sauce over the top of the bread. You can use homemade or store-bought, whichever suits your fancy.

Top the pizza sauce with a healthy dose of shredded mozzarella and sliced pepperoni. If you want to add sausage, diced peppers, diced onions, or crushed red pepper flakes you can add those at this time too. I opted for a simple family-friendly French Bread Pizza by going with a pepperoni version.

Bake the French Bread Pizza in the oven for 10 minutes, or until the cheese is nice and melty!

An Easy Starting Recipe for the Littles to Help

Dump Cake

While the finished result may taste like you slaved over the stove all day, the Dump Cake is just how it sounds - dumping ingredients into a pan and cooking it! If you have preschoolers who aren’t quite ready for a math or science lesson just yet, let them dump and stir these ingredients up. They’ll be thrilled and proud to serve their cake once finished!

Ingredients:

Optional ingredients: chopped nuts, vanilla ice cream, or whipped cream

Instructions:

Follow Feasted on FaceBook (or Feasted at Home on YouTube) to let your kids watch and join in on making classic recipes prepared by the host, Chris, and his friends. Weekdays offer live cooking classes for children on FaceBook, but if you miss them, you can always tune into the re-runs for just as much fun. Here’s their video on making potato gnocchi.

Raddish Kids has a healthy sweet treat in store below when you print the following recipe for pistachio date truffles and follow the instructions for a little Moroccan study and taste-testing of a traditional Moroccan dessert, normally served with tea.

Pistachio Date Truffles

Print the following chart here for your children to follow along. Choose elements from the Made in Morocco lesson plan here to support your studies on Morocco while you cook and eat.

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