Experiment

For my experiment, I baked sugar cookies and blueberry muffins. I made one batch with sugar and one with Splenda for both the muffins and cookies. (With the cookies, I only did half a recipe.) When I used the sugar, the muffins were moist and soft, like normal muffins usually are. With Splenda, the muffins were very cakey, they fell apart very easily, and they were very dry. They were more like biscuits than muffins. Also, the recipe called for placing some sugar on top of the muffins before baking. With the Splenda, the crystals looked very flakey and unlike regular sugar. When I made the sugar cookies, I had to redo the ones made with sugar because I forgot an ingredient. But when I baked the cookies with sugar, they were sweet and delicious. The appearance was flat and the sugar was just a dusting on the top. After making the cookies with Splenda, the sugar that was on the surface of the cookies didn’t “soak in,” didn’t flatten out at all, were very dry and cakey, and they looked like they were never baked. When eating them, you needed to drink water as they were very dense.

     In making the muffins, I used many ingredients. For my blueberry muffins, I used: ¾ cup milk, ½ cup vegetable oil, one egg, two cups all-purpose or whole wheat flour, 1/3 cup sugar, three teaspoons baking powder, one teaspoon salt, and  ¾ cup frozen blueberries, thawed and well drained. To make these muffins, I heated the oven to 400° and greased the bottoms of twelve medium muffin cups. I then beat the milk, oil and egg. Then  I stirred in the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt all together. I did this until flour is moistened. Next, I folded in the blueberries. I then poured an equal amount of batter into all of the muffin cups, and then sprinkled on a little sugar. I baked the muffins until they were a golden brown which is about eighteen to twenty minutes. Then I immediately removed them from the pan. With making these muffins with Splenda, I replaced all the sugar for Splenda.

            For the sugar cookies, I used half the ingredients called for, but here are the real measurements. I used two cups all-purpose flour, one teaspoon baking powder, ½  teaspoon salt, ½ pound (two sticks) unsalted butter, softened, one cup granulated sugar plus ¼ cup for rolling cookies, one large egg, and two teaspoons of vanilla extract. Heat the oven 375° and whisk flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Either by hand or electric mixer, cream butter and one cup sugar until light and fluffy, for three minutes at medium speed. Add egg and vanilla extract; beat until combined and add the dry ingredients and beat at low speed until just combined. Have the ¼ cup of sugar on the side; role up cookie dough into little balls and push them down with a glass that has sugar on the bottom. Make sure that they are not too flat and too wide. Bake the cookies from ten to eleven minutes until pale golden. Let them cool down for two to three minutes.