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You’re just in time!
Today, Squeaks and I are baking!
[Squeaks squeaks] You’re right, Squeaks.
When you put batter into the oven, and take out a cake, it does kinda feel like magic!
But it’s really a lot more like … science!
When we combine our ingredients and mix them, they’ll change to become liquidy batter.
And then when we put that batter in the oven, the heat will change it into a cake!
And that cake is going to be delicious.
Alright, Squeaks! What ingredients do we need to make all those changes happen?
[Squeaks squeaks] Great idea! Let’s check out our recipe!
Well, first we’re going to need 3 cups of flour!
When we mix that flour with water, it makes a stretchy batter.
Since it’s stretchy, when our cake goes in the oven, it can rise!
That’s when the cake gets bigger and taller as it bakes.
In a cake, the ingredients that help with rising are usually baking soda or baking powder.
That’s this white stuff we have here.
When you add baking soda or baking powder to the other ingredients, they create little bubbles of a gas called carbon dioxide.
The bubbles are trapped inside the cake.
Then, when the batter goes in the oven, the heat makes those bubbles get bigger … and bigger …
taking the cake batter with them, until the whole cake is spongy and puffed up!
Next is butter, which we’re using as the fat for our cake.
Now, when we say fat, we don’t mean the fat we have on our bodies. We’re talking about a type of food.
You already know that this cake is going to be made up of all the ingredients in our recipe.
Butter is one of them!
But butter is made of its own list of ingredients, too … and fat is one of them.
Lots of foods have fat in them, like oil, which some recipes use instead of butter.
No matter what form of fat you’re using, the fat’s job is to coat the flour, which keeps it from mixing with the water too much.
That will make our cake soft and fluffy!
Most recipes use eggs, too – for a few different reasons.
Our recipe calls for two eggs.
Eggs are fun to crack, but make sure a grown-up is helping you!
One of the things eggs do is help the batter turn from a liquid into a solid cake once it’s in the oven.
And they can also help the cake rise!
Whipping egg whites will fill them with air bubbles, and if you can be careful to get the egg whites with those air bubbles into your batter … that air will help the cake rise.
We’re also using sugar in our recipe, and I bet you can guess why … it’ll make everything taste terrific and I can’t wait!
Alright, Squeaks, let’s put all of our ingredients together, and put our cake in the oven!
Our cake has been baking in the oven for a little while now!
We measured everything perfectly, so our flour, butter, baking soda, eggs, and all the other ingredients are reacting to each other to turn the batter into a cake.
We’ve set a timer so we know when it’s done baking, and it should be any minute now!
We also preheated our oven earlier – which means we turned it on before we started our project, because the oven takes some time to warm up.
And it needs to get very, very hot in there!
Right now, our oven is at 175 degrees Celsius, or 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
That means it’s more than hot enough for all those bubbles in the batter to get bigger, helping it rise.
Other ingredients are breaking down and mixing to make yummy flavors, while the eggs and flour help hold it all together!
Baking is a great activity for kids and grown-ups to do together!
But using the oven – pre-heating, putting pans in, and taking them out – is definitely a job for your grown-up.
[timer dings]
It’s time!
Squeaks, let me go get the cake out of the oven!
Hey, Squeaks!
The cake is ready!
Hey… what’s going on here?
Bill, Webb, and Sam: Happy birthday, Jessi!
Oh my goodness, thank you everyone! I forgot it was my birthday!
This is awesome! I’m so glad we’re celebrating with baking science!
Thanks for joining us!
If you want to keep learning and having fun with Squeaks and me, hit the subscribe button, and don’t forget to check us out on the YouTube Kids app.
Thanks, and we’ll see you next time, here at the Fort!