Question

You are the pastry chef in a bakery that is responsible for preparing chocolate chip cookies for a wedding of 320 people. Your owner has determined that you will prepare 1½ cookies per person. First, determine the correct amount of cookies you will need to prepare. Next, use your knowledge of baker's percentages to decrease the formula to yield the proper amount of cookies for the wedding using the recipe to the right.

Answer 1

To determine the correct amount of cookies to prepare, we need to multiply the number of people by the number of cookies per person:

320 people x 1.5 cookies per person = 480 cookies

So we need to prepare 480 cookies for the wedding.

To decrease the recipe using baker's percentages, we need to first determine the total flour weight, which will serve as our base weight. Let's assume that the recipe makes 24 cookies:

2 cups (240g) all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup (170g) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar

1/2 cup (100g) packed brown sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups (270g) semisweet chocolate chips

Total weight of dry ingredients: 240g flour + 2.5g baking soda + 2.5g salt = 245g

Now, we can calculate the baker's percentage for each ingredient by dividing its weight by the total flour weight:

Flour: 240g / 245g = 0.98 or 98%

Baking soda: 2.5g / 245g = 0.01 or 1%

Salt: 2.5g / 245g = 0.01 or 1%

Butter: 170g / 245g = 0.69 or 69%

Granulated sugar: 100g / 245g = 0.41 or 41%

Brown sugar: 100g / 245g = 0.41 or 41%

Egg: 1 / 245g = 0.004 or 0.4%

Vanilla extract: 1 tsp (5ml) is negligible

To calculate the new recipe for 480 cookies, we need to multiply each ingredient by a factor of 20 (since we're making 20 times as many cookies as the original recipe). However, we also need to adjust the flour amount to maintain the same baker's percentage. We want to use 98% of the total flour weight, which is 480 x 1.5 x 240g x 0.98 = 105,840g.

Here's the new recipe, with weights rounded to the nearest gram:

10.3kg all-purpose flour

260g baking soda

260g salt

7.1kg unsalted butter, at room temperature

4.1kg granulated sugar

4.1kg packed brown sugar

480 large eggs

1 cup (240ml) vanilla extract

10.8kg semisweet chocolate chips

Note that the amounts of baking soda and salt have also been adjusted according to their baker's percentages. Also, we rounded up the number of eggs to 480 to avoid using a fraction of an egg. Finally, we included a measurement for the vanilla extract, assuming that 1 cup (240ml) would be enough for the recipe.

Explanation: