The effect of eggs in baking

[deleted-303194]

My daughter loves to bake and wants to do her project on the effect of eggs on baking. She wants to bake a cake with eggs and one without. I believe we need to do more than one cake, correct? How many would be appropriate? Are the effects adequately measurable? Appearance, height, color, taste? This is her first science fair project and she is in 3rd grade, so I would like to keep it fairly simple yet it be an appropriate test. Thank you!

[deleted-249560]

That will be a really fun project. Any science you can eat afterwards...

You certainly will need to make multiple cakes. They all have to be exactly the same except for the eggs, baked at the same temperature and for same period of time. You can see what happens if you just leave the eggs out, but that may not be what you want to do. Eggs add liquid needed to absorb into the flour, the proteins add structure and the fats and emulsifiers add to the texture. The immediate effect of just leaving out eggs would be the batter may be too dry. That's worth trying, but you may also want to explore egg substitutes. Vegan baking sometimes uses chickpea liquid as a substitute since it adds back in some of the characteristics of eggs. A web search for 'aquafaba' will get you to the official aquafaba site, http://aquafaba.com/. Other alternatives are ground flaxseed, applesauce or soft tofu. You'd use 1/4 cup of any of these to replace each egg.

Appearance, height, color & taste seem like excellent things to measure. You can't really measure taste, but she can invite her friends over, give them pieces of the cakes and have them judge which is the tastiest or least tasty.

Howard

[deleted-303194]

Great advice Howard! Thank you! The recipe does call for some water so I'm hoping that it will be enough to bind the ingredients somewhat. She is definitely most excited about tasting! Now, if we can just find the time to bake 6 cakes

[324B21]

Good Evening/Morning,

What a great idea! This sounds like such a yummy and educational project. I concur with Howard that applesauce would be a great alternative. What is great about applesauce is that it provides the structure, binding, and leavening properties necessary, while still allowing it to maintain a taste and texture equivalent to a cake made with eggs. Most times this taste difference is negligible in my experience. When using applesauce Howard is completely correct about the proportions: you would use 1/4 a cup for each egg the recipe calls for. Unsweetened applesauce works best, as the other ingredients will already be providing plenty of sugar--though you could certainly try it with and without, then if a taste difference is noticed spark a discussion about how the sugar content might have influenced the taste of the cake.

Please bear in mind that your bake time will need to be adjusted as egg itself adds fat (which in turns helps with keeping cake from drying out). This would apply to any substitute where fat in some form is not being used (like applesauce). I might suggest doing the toothpick test about 10-13 minutes early, and keeping a close eye on things from there. Chocolate cake for this project might be a good way to go if you are wanting to "fool" friends and classmates as chocolate itself tends to help mask other flavors.

One last idea would be to try egg whites versus the whole egg. If you do choose to go this route, you would want to double the number of egg whites for each egg called for.

Have a great time!

Elizabeth