Finding Could Help Bake a Better Cookie
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
British researchers have discovered why a cookie crumbles.
Using a laser beam to monitor the fault lines of cookies emerging from an oven, researchers from Loughborough University followed the tiny deformations that evolve as the cookie picks up moisture around the rim, which causes it to expand, while losing moisture at the center, which causes it to contract.
The resulting strains can pull the cookie apart, or leave it more vulnerable to breakage.
The team reported in the journal Measurement Science and Technology that the discovery should help cookie manufacturers adjust the humidity and temperature of their production lines to minimize cracking.
