Substituting baking soda for baking powder project.

[deleted-255390]

Hi. I did the project for baking powder substitutes. I did 3 batches: I did a regular batch with no substitute. I then substituted baking soda and cream of tartar for baking powder and then I did a batch substituting baking soda and butter milk for baking powder. I also omitted the milk in the regular recipe. That's what the instructions said to do if using buttermilk. My question is for the last batch using buttermilk the batch ended up with 18 muffins. The first 2 batches made 14. How do I report this in my experiment? Also, how do I compare the data such as height and weight? Do I take the average of all 18 for the third batch or do I use maybe 6 from each batch? And do I mention I omitted the milk? Your help would be great asap. Thanks!

[deleted-288920]

Hi there!

This sounds like it was a fun and probably yummy project! I need to ask, was there a taste difference? What muffin looked the best? What one tasted the best?

So you need report everything you did in your experiment as far as changes you made to the recipes and how many muffins you ended up with. The fact you ended up with 4 more muffins with one of the recipe is very important to your results. As far as calculating the average you could do it either way. If you only average 6 or 10 from each batch make sure to report that. However since you are doing an average, the first 2 batches you would add everything up and divide by 14 where the last batch you would divide by 18. So either one should be accurate. As the procedure said if you had 1 muffin in a given batch that was much smaller, not to include it in the average, so 14 vs. 18 is ok.

I hope this helps! Please let us know if you have other questions.

Nikki

[deleted-255390]

Thanks so much for your help. The first batch was the driest and sweetest. The third batch was more moist. The second batch with the baking powder and cream of tartar were less sweet and A tiny bit more salty but they were all good. I have another question. Since I substituted the butter milk and baking soda for baking powder the substitution mixture says to omit the liquid in the original recipe which was 1/4 cup of milk. I did that but how does that effect my constant variable. The first 2 batches the recipe was a constant variable but now it changed in the third batch when I omitted the milk. How do I say this in my report.

[deleted-288920]

Those are some very interesting findings! I think you could probably describe it as a variable to your constant variable as it was a suggestion to do based upon the recipe change. Depending on how much time you have before your project is do and if you have any ingredients left over, you could try to determine why you needed the substitution? Or you could make a hypothesis (and use it as a future science project) of what would happen if you didn't omit the milk.

Does that help?

[deleted-255390]

Yes thank you!