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For a long time, I thought my lab career had peaked in the seventh grade. My science project that year was entitled, “What is the Most Important Ingredient in a Cake?” I baked Betty Crocker’s yellow cake recipe ten times – each time omitting a different ingredient. I evaluated the finished cakes with a rubric that included height, color, texture and taste.

It wasn’t my highest-scoring science project. Late the night before it was due, I covered my tri-fold board with jagged, multi-colored fans of construction paper and bubble letters. I hoped it would come off as “whimsical,” but the judges called it “sloppy.” Also, they weren’t impressed that I had only done the experiment once. Apparently, the Doc Brown method wasn’t good enough for the high schoolers who got extra credit for evaluating my middle school science fair. But, it was the most relevant that “science” had ever seemed to me. Through my process, I learned that vanilla and salt are purely for taste, baking soda and eggs are for leavening, and sugar is what keeps cake from tasting like Ramen noodles. To this day, whenever I have to substitute an ingredient in a baked good, I think back to that experiment.

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