Our Year 5 children seem to have very much enjoyed the first stages of this half term’s Design and Technology project – exploring a basic chocolate recipe and potential flavourings for exciting chocolates of their own design.
After a lesson finding out about how cocoa beans are grown and processed into cocoa powder and about the part that Fairtrade cocoa has to play in chocolate manufacturing two weeks ago, this week we got down to some practical work. The children worked in groups to practise their measuring and cooking skills to make a batch of a base recipe, and then created a different version of the basic recipe to identify which ingredients made the biggest and best differences to the recipe. As we are in Year 5, there was a heavy focus on independent food hygiene awareness, including making sure your cooking area and equipment are clean and how to deal with spillages, as well as good old basic hand washing.
After a busy afternoon making, it was time to taste. As well as evaluating the texture, smell, appearance and taste of the different variations of the base recipes, we used the ‘air up’ technique of smelling different potential flavourings alongside a chocolate sample to explore what might make an interesting flavour combination with the base recipe (and what was a definite no-no!)
Later in the term, we will help the children design and make their own chocolates using their research from these lessons and create some packaging for their confections. Yum times ahead!