Compare the taste and feel of different sugars and honey in these great cookies.
Things Required:
1½ cups of flour
1½ sticks or 170g margarine or butter
2 tablespoonfuls of white sugar
2 tablespoonfuls of brown sugar
1 Tablespoon honey
1½ tablespoonfuls of lemon juice
Bowls
Wooden spoon
Cookie sheets
Teaspoon
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Soften the margarine at room temperature before you start to mix it with the various sugars.
Using a food processor or a bowl with a wooden spoon, cream a half stick (4 tablespoonfuls) of margarine with the white sugar. Add a half teaspoonful of lemon juice. Gradually mix in a half cup of the flour. Continue mixing until the dough is smooth and beginning to form a ball.
Repeat the process with the brown sugar and then with the honey.
Drop rounded teaspoonfuls of the dough onto cookie sheets about two inches (5 cm) apart. Press each cookie flat with the back of the spoon. Each batch makes about a dozen cookies. Bake 15 minutes or until the cookies are a light brown.
Let it cool and then taste it.
This Is What Happens:
The cookies are equally sweet, but the tastes are different!
Science Behind It:
Each sweetener comes from a different source.
White sugar-sucrose-is made either from a tall grass known as sugar cane or from the roots of sugar beets. When it is processed, impurities are removed; it is then refined, and made into the granulated, lump, or powdered form we buy in the supermarket.
Brown sugar also comes from sucrose, but it is made by coating sucrose crystals with molasses, the thick syrup left when water is boiled out of sucrose.
Honey, of course, is manufactured by bees. They make the sweet, sticky thick liquid from the nectar of flowers.
Honey has 18 more calories per tablespoon than sugar, but because honey is sweeter than sugar, you need less. You used only half as much honey as sugar for your cookies.
Honey has small amounts of vitamins and minerals, but too little to offer much nutrition. Cookies made with honey, though, may stay moist longer because honey retains moisture longer while baking. It may even bring moisture from the air into the finished cookies. That’s why candy made with honey tends to get sticky.
