When Science Meets Sugar

The moment I realized my grandson Lucas wouldn’t eat my prize-winning chocolate chip cookies because they had “bumpy things” in them, I knew my days of casual baking were over. After fifteen years developing commercial food products, I thought I knew everything about creating perfect treats.

I was wrong. Grandchildren are far more demanding than any corporate taste panel.

My Laboratory Kitchen

My kitchen looks more like a food science lab than a grandmother’s baking space, complete with three candy thermometers and a digital scale that measures to the tenth of a gram. Whiskers, my tabby cat, supervises every experiment from his perch on the windowsill, occasionally flicking his tail when the timer goes off.

I keep detailed notes of every baking session—temperature, humidity, even which oven rack I used. When Emma declared my fudge “too chewy” last Christmas, I spent weeks adjusting the soft-ball stage temperature by single degrees until I hit that perfect 238°F sweet spot.

Beyond the Mixing Bowl

When I’m not perfecting the crystallization process in homemade caramels, you’ll find me tending to my herb garden or reading the latest food science journals. I still geek out over the Maillard reaction and get genuinely excited when I discover why adding a tablespoon of corn syrup prevents my butterscotch from turning grainy.

Every recipe I share has been tested, retested, and kid-approved by my toughest critics. Because if it passes the Emma-and-Lucas test, it’s scientifically proven to be perfect.

Eleanor Thompson