Not so much of an angel food cake

Mini-experiment: Coagulation of egg whites in angel food cake

Background:

Cream of tartar is thought of as a stabilizing agent to help egg whites coagulate.  Although it says cream, it is actually a powder found in the spices section of the grocery store.  The coagulation process is due to the acidity introduced by this ingredient when mixed for angel food cake (Christensen, 2008).  The spice is used because it is odorless and tasteless.  I wanted to see how something acidic as lemon juice could substitute for this process.  Although I am expecting an obvious taste difference, I am looking to see how the substitution affects any of the other aspects of the cooking result.  As lemon juice is only a substitution, it made sense that the juice might not produce as consistent of a result and will not stabilize the egg whites as well as the cream of tartar.   

Hypothesis:  The angel food cake with lemon juice substitute will have more cracks in it than the cake with cream of tartar. 

Null hypothesis: There will be no difference in the amount of cracks between the cakes.

 

Independent variable: Cream of tartar/ lemon juice

Dependent variable: Number of cracks in cake

I will standardize:

-          Oven

o   Cooked at same time

-          Whipping method

o   Whisk – recipe calls for electric mixer

-          Pan

o   Disposable loaf pan with parchment paper lining bottom

-          Ratio of lemon juice to cream of tartar

o   1:1

Results

	Cream of tartar	Lemon juice
Cracks	6	1

  

The cake with lemon juice in it took had less cracks than the cream of tartar.

 

Ingredients

Parchment paper lining

Unable to make peaks while mixing

Ready to cook!

Left: lemon juice  Right: cream of tartar

Discussion

I did not accept the null hypothesis or support my hypothesis in this experiment.  The opposite of what was expected happened.  There were a significant amount of cracks in the cake with cream of tartar compared to the cake with lemon juice.  With lemon juice as a known substitute for cream of tartar it made sense that the lemon juice would not stabilize the egg as well as the cream of tartar because as a substitute it traditionally has been inconsistent in the past (Palmer, 2007).  Past research and experiences cooking this recipe express that the recipe needs to be followed strictly or else the cakes might collapse (Christensen, 2008).  There were a few mistakes that happened during the preparation that could explain this outcome and that will lead to limitations.  First of all, I accidentally mixed all of the sugar into the flour mixture when I was supposed to reserve half of it for the whipping of the egg whites.  To correct this mistake I added ¼ cup of sugar to the egg whites when whipping.  Also, when I was adding the lemon juice I accidentally squirted a little extra juice in the mixing bowl, missing the teaspoon.  Another limitation might be that I did not have an electric mixer and I was unable to get the egg whites to form peaks after whisking manually.  Although they were bad mistakes, some of them were caused by a little confusion by some of the wording of the recipe and I learned what everything meant by the time I was finished.  This angel food cake preparation turned out to be a tough process. 

Good news is, I learned a lot; it was all what not to do, but that is an important part of the learning process I think.

Thanks for reading!