9781422289167

5 Fractions in the Kitchen

R ecipes usually tell you how many servings they make. But sometimes you need to make a different number of servings. When that happens, you must adjust the amount of each ingredient in the recipe. Especially when you’re making baked goods, you can’t just throw in extra of one ingredient and expect the food to turn out right. Recipes for cakes, cookies, and breads are like chemical formulas: you need to keep the amounts exactly right or the cake, cook- ies, or bread won’t rise right. It might turn out flat and hard—or it might rise too much and be full of bubbles. So if you want to double a recipe you need to multiply each ingredient by 2. And if you want to make half of a recipe, you’ll need use exactly half of each ingredient. You’ll find some examples on the next page.

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