Time Frame:  1 block

Class Size: 20

Objective

• 9.3.5 Analyze recipe/formula proportions and modifications for food production.

• 9.5.6 Conduct sensory evaluations of food products.

Materials

• Variety of granola bar ingredients such as:
  • Oats
  • Craisins
  • Mini Chocolate Chips
  • Peanut Butter
  • Raisins
  • Almonds
  • Walnuts
  • Coconut
  • Coffee Grounds
  • Coco Powder
  • Mini Marshmallows
  • Dried Mango
  • Dried Pineapple
  • Apples
  • Wheat Germ
  • Wheat Bran

Background for Teachers

• If you’ve read the majority of my lessons you know already that I am a really big fan of experimenting and allowing students to figure it out even if they get it wrong. For this lesson I like to give students a general idea of how to make granola bars (See recipe) but then let them choose from a “bar” of ingredients to make their bars unique. If they keep the proportions similar to the base recipe they usually turn out just fine.
• One tip I like to tell my students is to think outside of the box. Do granola bars have to be bar shaped? Check out the recipes in the “links” section below for inspiration.

Activities

• Working in groups  of four students will create their own unique granola bars. I have students write down their recipe as they go and hand it in with a reflection of how the product turned out in the end.
• If you have time have your students draw packaging for their granola bar. What health claims can be made about their bars?

Attachments

• Granola Bar Lab Recipe & Worksheet (Word)

Links

• Homemade Granola  Bars
• Lunch Box Granola Cupcakes
• Heart Shaped Granola Cookies

Similar Lessons

• Ingredient Function and Purpose

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The holiday season can be stressful for us as the students get riled up in anticipation of school break, classes get shorter making it hard to cram our lessons into half days, and our personal lives get busy. I personally view holidays as a way to celebrate with students and take some of the pressure off of the normal academia pacing that at this time of the semester can leave us all exhausted. Here are a few holiday ideas to either help your department raise money, fit in some extra holiday excitement, or comply with a half day schedule.

Fundraisers

• Thanksgiving Pie Fundraiser

Baking & Pastry

• Tiny Turkey Dinner Cupcakes
• Nutter butter Turkey Cookies
• Pumpkin Cream Cheese Roll

Hospitality

• Turkey Placeholders

Sewing

• Felt Turkey Pins
• Turkey Chair Covers
• Soft Pumpkins These can be made into pincushions

Preschool

• Foot & Hand Turkey Craft
• Turkey Songs

Community Service

• Find a Local Food Bank
• Thanksgiving Food Baskets (PDF)

Life Skills

• Collage Family Tree

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Vanilla is expensive and vanilla beans even more so. This is a great lesson to teach students about vanilla without breaking the bank. One vanilla bean required!

Time Frame: One Block + Eating Creme Brulee the next class
Objective The student will describe the process of making vanilla and the steps of making creme brulee.
Set

• Have students partner up and complete the vanilla trivia game. Time them to see who can come up with the most correct answers the fastest.
  

Materials

• Projector & Computer
• One vanilla bean
• Ingredients for Creme Brulee

Instruction

• Short lecture on the history and process of making vanilla

Activities

• Creme Brulee demonstration. Have students take notes on the process of making the dish. Offer extra credit for any student that makes it at home.
• Alternative – show this YouTube video in place of a live demonstration.

How to download a YouTube video

Background for Teachers

• My favorite recipe is from Alton Brown but you may have your own. Note you will demonstrate how to make creme brulee but the students won’t be able to sample the finished product until the next class as it requires 2 hours in the refrigerator.
• Alternative for classes back to back is to premake some creme brulee so each class can sample and use each classes demos for another class’ samples.
• Don’t have a blow torch or not going to get away with using a blow torch in school? No problem use the broiler just keep your eye on them. I also find that Sugar in the Raw works good to add the crunch if you can’t use a blow torch.

Attachments

• Vanilla PowerPoint (PPT)
• Vanilla Trivia Game (Word)
• Vanilla Trivia Key (Word)

Websites

• Alton Brown’s Creme Brulee Recipe
• How to Make Vanilla at Home
• A Century of Flavor: Nielsen-Massey Vanillas

Similar Lessons

• Taste Bud Test

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I don’t know if you like pop tarts or not but they have a large student following. Personally I think the crust tastes like cardboard but I guess kids don’t notice. Why not learn how to make kid’s favorite snack from scratch and turn it into an experiment?

Time Frame: 2 Blocks (One day for explanation, finding recipe, measuring ingredients; Second day to make, bake & evaluate)

Objective: The goal of this lesson is to create a “from scratch” pop tart that is better than the ones on the store shelf.

Set

• Line your counter with boxes of different kinds of Pop-Tarts.
• Explain the challenge of the day: create the best “from scratch” pop tart that tastes and looks better then the ones on the shelf.
  

Materials

• 1 store bought pop tart (the kind you are trying to replicate)
• Filling Ingredients (Strawberry jam, cinnamon, fluff, chocolate chips, etc)

 

Instructions

• There are a lot of recipes for home-made Pop-Tarts on the internet. It doesn’t mean that any of them are perfect though. Have students mix and match, look at multiple recipes, and use their knowledge of the function of ingredients in baked products to come up with their best crust and filling recipes.

Activities

• Students research & chose a recipe
• Students will make their Pop-Tarts
• Students will evaluate their finished products

Evaluation

• Cut the store bought pop tart in half. Cut the homemade pop tart in half and line them up side by side.
  • What do you observe?
  • Is there a height difference?
  • Which crust is thicker?
  • Which filling is thicker?
  • Which pop tart has more frosting?
  • Which one tastes better?

Attachments

• Pop-Tart Challenge (Word)

Extensions

• Take a store bought pop tart and put it in a glass jar with a lid.
  • Take one of your homemade pop tarts and put it in a separate glass jar with a lid.
  • See how long it takes for them each to start to decompose. Have your class make predictions.
• Another really silly thing to do is make a gourmet plated dessert using Pop-Tarts. Check out some of the ideas here.

Closure

• Why do you think that store bought pop tarts are the way they are if we can make a better product? (shelf life, manufacturing)
• What challenges did we face?
• What are some solutions that we came up with to solve those challenges?
• At the end of the day would you rather have a homemade pop tart or store bought pop tart?

Websites

• Pop Tarts
• Pop Tart Recipe using Pie Crust
• King Arthur’s Pop-Tart Recipe
• Pop Tart Recipe using Pâte Brisée

Pictures

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Objective: Identify and apply sanitation rules and guidelines.

Set

• See how much students already know about safety and sanitation by having them fill out the survey.
• Safety & Sanitation Survey (Word)

Materials

Instruction

• Safety & Sanitation PowerPoint Lecture (PPT)
• Safety & Sanitation PowerPoint Notes (Word)

Activities

• Practice hand washing

Evaluation

• Be Safe not Sorry Cartoon assigned for homework
• Quiz

Attachments

• Be Safe Not Sorry Cartoon (Word)
• Kitchen Safety & Sanitation Quiz (Word)

Websites

• Food Safety
• Health Inspector Coach (50 Minute video)

Similar Lessons

• Safe and Sanitary Work Habits – Level I
• Safety Lab

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Time Frame: 2 blocks

Objective: Given a demonstration on how to make an apple pie, students will make their own pie with 90% accuracy and evaluate factors that affect pie results.

National Standard: 8.4 Demonstrate planning menu items based on standardized recipes to meet customer needs.

Set

• Demonstration on how to roll out pie crust and make an apple pie
• Questions:
  • How many of you have made a pie before?
  • How many of you have watched a family member make a pie?
  • What is your favorite pie?
  • What kinds of pie do you have for Thanksgiving?

Materials

Background for teachers

• I like to give my students a choice between several different pies depending on the season
• Fall Semester: Apple, pumpkin, Swiss apple, apple cranberry crumble, pecan, cherry.
• Spring Semester: Banana Cream, peanut butter, key lime, strawberry rhubarb, lemon meringue.
  

Activities

• In their lab groups students will make their own individual pie
• Students will sample demo apple pie
• Students will start Pie Lab sheet using the text book

Closure

• Whose pie did you think turned out the best and why?
• If you were to make another pie what would you do differently next time?
• Why is it necessary to cut holes in the top of the pie?
• Why is it necessary to poke holes in the bottom of a one-crusted pie?
• What is the secret to making flaky pie crusts?

Evaluation

• Students will evaluate the apple pies and determine which one has the best appearance out of the whole class (Fill out Characteristics of High-Quality Pies)
• Students will taste their pie
• Students will answer lab questions  found on evaluation form
• Finish/Review Pie Study Sheet

Attachments

• Characteristics of High Quality Pie Crusts (Word)
• Pie Quiz (Word)

Websites

• Banana Cream Pie
• Strawberry Rhubarb
• Pecan
• Lemon Meringue
• Key Lime Pie
• Peanut butter Pie

Similar Lessons

• Pie Crust Experiment
• Thanksgiving Pie Fundraiser

• Double-Crusted Pie Lab
• Double-Crusted Pie Lecture and Demonstration

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Time Frame: 2 blocks

Objective: Prepare and present pizza dough & sauce.

Set

• Show the following Youtube video of Alton Brown:

• How to copy a Youtube video

Materials

Activities

• Day 1: Each lab group will make their own dough and sauce using the recipes provided modifying as necessary. Dough should be put in oiled zip lock bags and refrigerated overnight.
• Day 2: Each lab group will make and name their pizza, and plate one piece for judging.
• Its also fun to watch a culinary themed movie while the students eat their pizzas like Ratatouille.

Attachments

• Pizza Dough & Sauce Recipe (PDF)
• Judging Criteria

Websites

• Pizza Score Sheets

Print PDF

Objective: Students will apply the muffin method to make high quality muffins.

Set

• Demonstrate the muffin method

Materials

Activities

• Each lab group is to make a different type of muffin using their mini muffin pan.
• After the students are finished have  them take one of each kind of muffin to look at and eventually taste.
• Students should fill out the muffin lab chart while looking at their muffins.

Closure

• Why did some muffins rise more than others?
• What was your favorite muffin and why?

Attachments

• Muffin Lab (Excel)
• Muffin Recipes (PDF)

Similar Lessons

• Quick Breads, Muffin Method Demo
• Quick Breads, Muffin Method Lab

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Reverse engineering packaged foods has been a hobby of mine for a few years now. It is fascinating how “they” come up with these products and to see if I can recreate them to make them taste better in my own kitchen. As many of you know and hopefully have tried by now, Subway came introduced their raspberry cheesecake cookies through a free raspberry cheesecake cookie promotion on Valentine’s Day just a month ago. As soon as I tried it I thought it was excellent and immediately wanted to make them in large quantities at home!

The steps of reverse engineering:

1. Research: find out all you possibly can about the product and about other reproductions out there

• Google search
• Find out what ingredients are in the subway cookie from subway’s nutrition facts:

“RASPBERRY CHEESECAKE Enriched Bleached Flour (Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Sugar, Margarine (Palm Oil, Water, Soybean Oil, Salt, Mono- and Diglycerides, Natural Flavor, Vitamin A Palmitate, Beta Carotene), White Chips (Sugar,Palm Kernel and Palm Oil, Nonfat Dry Milk, Soy Lecithin, Vanilla), Eggs, Raspberry Bits (Dextrose, Palm Oil, Sugar, Corn Flour, Raspberry Powder, Natural Flavor, Citric Acid, Blueberry and Carrot Extracts), Neufchatel Cheese (Pasteurized Milk and Cream, Cheese Culture, Salt, Stabilizer [Carob Bean and/or Guar and/or Xanthan Gums]), Invert Sugar, Maltodextrin, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Baking Soda, Salt, Yellow 5. Contains: Wheat, milk, soybeans and eggs. “

2. Observe & Brainstorm: try to pick out all the ingredients in the product and think of all possible ways that the product could have been made. Also think about how to make the product without special industrial machinery or food chemicals that are not accessible to the general public.

• Cookie base: basic chocolate chip cookie w/o chocolate chips, sugar cookie dough, something else
• Raspberry: jelly, jam, pastry filling, raspberry candy, fresh raspberries
• Cheesecake: an actual cheese cake cut up, cheese cake flavoring, no cheese cake just white chocolate chips

3. Try the most likely solution: look your brainstorming list and pick the most likely solution and try it. Be sure to keep certain variables as controls.

• The first batch: chocolate chip cookie recipe from the back of a Hershey’s bag of chocolate chips with 2 cups of white chocolate, chunked Sara Lee cheesecake (from the frozen section of the grocery store), seedless raspberry jam chopped up.

• The second batch: chocolate chip cookie recipe from the back of a Hershey’s bag of chocolate chips with 2 cups of white chocolate chips, no bake cheese cake powder (Jell-O brand) added to the batter, and seedless raspberry jam chopped up.

• The third batch: chocolate chip cookie recipe from the back of a Hershey’s bag of chocolate chips with 2 cups of white chocolate chips, no bake cheese cake powder added to the batter, and fresh raspberries.

• The fourth batch: chocolate chip cookie recipe from the back of a Hershey’s bag of chocolate chips with 2 cups of white chocolate, chunked Sara Lee cheesecake (from the frozen section of the grocery store), and fresh raspberries.

• The results of all these batches were a cake like cookie that tasted good but where not chewy enough and the cheese cake chunks disappeared in the cookie not adding enough cheese cake flavor.
• Note: The last couple cookies I added the gram cracker crust to the cookies and the taster thought they were much better.

4. Try another solution

• Disappointed with all the batches, I did a search on cream cheese cookies and found that there are cookies made with cream cheese and they look chewy (unlike the cake-like consistency of the ones I made) So, I changed the dough to a basic cream cheese dough then added white chocolate chunks & chips and raspberry jam.

Raspberry Cheesecake Cookie Recipe

Yield 6 dozen

Ingredients

• 1 stick butter, softened
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 8 oz Neufchatel cream cheese
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup white chocolate bar broken into chunks (for appearances & richness)
• 2 1/2 cups white chocolate chips
• Raspberry jam (no seeds) OR King Arthur Flour’s Raspberry Jammy Bits

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350F
• Cream butter, shortening, cream cheese, and sugars until fluffy.
• Add vanilla and eggs one at a time beating well.
• Stir in dry ingredients.
• Stir in white chocolate
• *Add raspberry jam to each cookie (stirring will make the jam gray the dough)
• Using a cookie scoop place cookies 1″ apart on a silapat or greased cookie sheet.
• Bake for 6- 8 minutes. Take out when they are lightly browned- under cook slightly. Let them finish baking on cookie sheet. Then let them cool completely on cooling rack before picking them up.

*Raspberry Jam

• Solution 1: 2 Tbsp of jam + 1Tbsp of cornstarch microwave for 30 seconds. Place in refrigerator immediately to cool. When cooled it should be pliable and you can take some of the sticky raspberry filling and roll them into balls and add to the dough. This is how you don’t turn the dough gray with streaks of raspberry jam throughout. (Probably how Subway does it- some sort of tacky jam product that has the consistency of more of a gummy candy that can be mixed in the dough without changing the dough’s color – then when baked melts into the cookie)
• Solution 2: take some jam out of the jar and place it in a piping back. As soon as the cookies come out of the oven pipe little blobs of jam into the cookie’s crevasses (produces the best looking cookie)
• Solution 3: If you don’t care how the cookies look only taste simply chop your cold jam into small pieces and add to each cookie. Don’t stir them in the batter.
• Solution 4: King Arthur Flour’s Raspberry Jammy Bits as G. Barnhart suggested below
  
• Note 1: Try not to have the raspberry jam touching the bottom of the cookie or it will stick to the pan.

Raspberry Cheesecake Cookie Recipe PDF

5. Modify the Recipe

• Looking at my cookies next to Subway’s there are several things that are still off slightly.
  • One is the color of the cookie. Subway’s raspberry cheese cake cookie is whiter looking than mine. Some possible explanations: I used unbleached flour and dark brown sugar.
  • The second thing that is off slightly is the raspberry jam part. Subway has got to stir in these raspberry jam pieces and just ship the dough to their stores. Although my solution #1 above is close I still wonder what they really do.
  • The third thing that is off is the size of my cookies compared to Subway’s. I used a cookie scoop but if you want them to be larger and more calories be my guest. Just write a comment on this page of how long you baked them for.

Career Connection

• How to become a food scientist
• Food Scientists & Technologists (Occupational Handbook)
• Institute of Food Technologists

Websites

• Grub Grade Food Review of the Cookie
• Brand Eating Review of the Cookie

Similar Reverse Engineering Recipes

• Gummy Candy
• Make your own Cereal Lab

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Course Expectations & Grading Policies

• Culinary II Course Expectations
• Male/Female Interpersonal Relationships Course Expectations
• Restaurant Management Grading Policy
• Child Development Course Expectations

Course Outlines

• Hospitality Course Outline
• Specialty Foods Outline
• American Cuisine
• Culinary I Course Outline
• Culinary II Outline
• Culinary 2 Outline
• Culinary Two Outline
• Culinary Program Overview
• Baking & Pastry Course Outline
• Gourmet Cooking Outline
• Restaurant Management Outline

Curriculum

• 6th Grade FCS
• 7th Grade – FCS
• 8th Grade – FCS
• HS – Career & Life Essentials
• HS – Career Internship
• HS – Child Development
• HS – Culinary Arts
• HS – Foods & Nutrition I
• HS – Foods & Nutrition II
• HS – Healthcare Careers
• HS – Housing & Interior Design
• HS – Human Development
• HS – Scientific Nutrition
• HS – Teacher Cadet
• HS – Textiles, Clothing, & Design

National Standards

• National Standards for Family and Consumer Sciences

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