Second Grade, Cooking & Food Science Projects, Lessons, Activities (35 results)

Dried beans are a major ingredient in dishes served all over the world. In their dried form, they can be stored for years and then "brought back to life" by soaking them in water. In this cooking and food science fair project, you will measure just how much water is absorbed by beans when they rehydrate (soak up water). Can such a little bean really hold that much water? Read more

Have you ever cooked up homemade candy, maybe from chocolate or table sugar? Maple syrup is not only deliciously gooey and great on breakfast foods like pancakes and waffles—you can also turn it into maple candies with an amazing range of textures! It can be made into sticky maple taffy, or hard, molded maple sugar candy. In this science activity, you will investigate how the temperature of heated maple syrup affects what types of candies can be made from it. Read more

Whipped egg whites are used in many sweet and savory recipes. They are used to add air into cake batters, meringues, and soufflés. Egg whites, also known as albumin are 15 percent protein dissolved into water. When egg whites are beaten or whipped, the protein chains unravel. This is called denaturation. The process of whipping egg whites adds air to the mixture, in addition to denaturing the proteins. The denatured proteins create bonds with each other and trap air bubbles within… Read more

It's the bottom of the ninth, and you've spent a great afternoon at the ball game with a hotdog, a soda, and an ice cream in hand, but I'll bet you're not thinking about how many crops went into those classic baseball snacks. Sure, the bun contains wheat, but did you know that the hotdog might contain wheat, too? And soybeans may have been used to give that ice cream its perfectly smooth texture, while corn was likely used to sweeten the entire meal! Crops can be changed and added to processed… Read more

French fries, hash browns, mashed potatoes with gravy, potato latkes, there are so many things to make with the humble potato. The potato is a tuber from the perennial plant Solanum Tuberosum of the Solanaceae family. There are actually about 5,000 varieties of potatoes, but most of them can be traced back to the original potato from southern Peru. This single ancestor originated more than 10,000 years ago. In addition to being high in vitamins and minerals, potatoes have a varying amount of… Read more