Robert L. Wolke
From Every Day with Rachael Ray
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Kids, get in on the act! Here's a fun fact for you: Rachael cooked her first full meal at 11 years old. Before you start banging pans around, remember two things—always cook with a GH (Rachael's word for Grown-up Helper) and have fun! There's lots to do on this area of the site—see how one little cook puts Rachael's fudge wreath recipe to the test (isn't she a cool kid!?). And if you have any questions for our expert, ask Einstein and find out fun facts about food and cooking!
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 Q: How does yeast make bread grow?—JORDAN, 10, Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada
A: Yeast is a living thing—a fungus—and living things grow when you feed them. The yeast cells sold in those little packages are alive, but dormant (asleep) until we give them water and food. When you mix flour, water and yeast to form a dough, some of the flour's starches break down into sugars, which the yeast gobbles up and uses to multiply into new yeast cells.(Yeast cells love to eat sugar.) During their sugar feast, the yeast cells burp carbon dioxide gas, which forms bubbles in the dough, making it rise. Without this rising, a loaf of bread would be more like a brick.
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 Q: My aunt's wedding cake was made of white chocolate. I thought all
chocolate was brown. What makes it white?—AIDAN, 9, Hingham, MA
A: One thing's for sure—they don't dip it in white paint. And you're right: All chocolate is brown. White chocolate isn't even chocolate! White
chocolate is just the fatty part of the whole, brown chocolate.
Let's look at how chocolate is made: Cacao "beans" are the seeds of
the tropical cacao tree. Workers split the seed pods open, dry the seeds in the sun and ship them off to the chocolate factory, where they are roasted, cracked open and ground up. Friction from the grinding process melts the seeds—they're about 55 percent fat—into a thick, shiny liquid called "chocolate liquor" (nothing to do with alcohol). That's the real stuff. Add sugar (and often some other flavorings), pour it into a mold and let it cool—then it's a chocolate bar!
Instead of making bars out of all the chocolate, the factory can squeeze the fat out of some of it, leaving behind only the brown solids, which we call cocoa. And what do they do with all that fat? They give it the fancy name "cocoa butter," mix it with sugar and powdered milk, call it white chocolate and fool wedding guests into thinking they're eating the real stuff.
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 Q: Why does Jell-O jiggle?
A: You'd jiggle too—if you were almost all water. (Actually, you're only about half water.) Let's make some Jell-O and see what happens. The package of Jell-O contains 3 ounces of powdery "stuff." That stuff is mostly sugar, but it also contains about a third of an ounce of gelatin. When we add the two required cups of hot water and chill the mixture, that small amount of gelatin holds onto all that water to make a big bowlful of jiggling, joggling, shimmering Jell-O. |
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Q: How does it do that?
A: Gelatin is a protein made by cooking up another protein called collagen. Now, get ready to say "Yuck!" because we get the collagen by boiling chunks of animal parts left over from the meat factories. Collagen is the tough protein that attaches animals' muscles (yes, even yours and mine) to their bones. When these animal scraps are boiled in water, the collagen breaks down into gelatin, which of course is highly purified before it's used in foods. Many custards, pie fillings and fruit jellies are also gels. So are a lot of shampoos and cosmetics. Gelatin is made of very tiny, stringy, curly molecules. When dissolved in water, they get all tangled up, trapping a lot of water among them—as much as 40 times their own weight—to form a gel. In a gel, this tangle of solids keeps the liquid from flowing, but it can still slosh around like water in a balloon. Result: the jiggle.
For more kids stuff, see our Cooking with Kids Page!
Older kids stuff is here, too!
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