Cake Subduction Zone

No one seemed to have this idea on the web, after accomplishing it, I thought I’d share it. Please credit me for the idea if you use it.

Cake Subduction Zone Demonstration

http://www.eps.mq.edu.au/USRG/ADosseto/

Materials needed:

1 chocolate cake mix and the ingredients the mix calls for

1 yellow cake mix and the ingredients the mix calls for

1 white cake mix and the ingredients the mix calls for

A good 9x13 inch cake pan

Long bread knife

mixer

4 pack food dye - red, yellow, green, blue

Freezer

Ingredients for the frosting recipes listed below (or purchase white and chocolate frosting):

     "PERFECTLY CHOCOLATE" CHOCOLATE FROSTING

     from www.hersheys.com
     1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine
     2/3 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa
     3 cups powdered sugar
     1/3 cup milk
     1 teaspoon vanilla extract

     Melt butter. Stir in cocoa. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating to spreading consistency. Add small amount additional milk, if needed. Stir in vanilla. Makes about 2 cups frosting.

     Butter Cream Frosting

     1/3 cup softened butter

     3 cups powder sugar

     1.5 tsp vanilla

     2 tb milk

     Blend butter and sugar, stir in vanilla and milk. Beat until frosting is smooth/spreading consistency. Add color.

Instructions:

Baking Tips: Make sure cakes are thoroughly cooked and cooled before trying to take them out of the pan!  If you don’t they may crumble apart and will have a higher chance of cracking.

Place wax paper under the baked cake when they are removed from pan so they do not stick to the surface you are putting them on and to make them easier to transport.

1     1 - Make white cake mix according to the directions on the package, pore 1/3 into a separate bowl and die blue. Dye the 2/3 left in the bowl red.  Bake the different colors separately, I gave them 1/3 and 2/3 of the full cooking time respectively.

2     2 - Mix and bake the chocolate and yellow cake separately according to the directions on the package.

3     3 -Freezing the cakes will make them easier to cut and carve into shape. Put cakes in freezer on a stiff surface – the cleaned baking dish, a cutting board, a cookie sheet-  to keep them from deforming when freezing. I found plastic is best to freeze the cakes on if you forgot to use wax paper under the cake when you took them out of the pan. (If you don’t have room for all of them, freeze them in order of assemblage). If you have a funky freezer smell, make sure to put them in an air tight container or wrapped well in saran wrap to keep the smell from getting into your cake.

4     4 - Make frostings; leave the butter cream white for now.

5     5 -When cakes are frozen, remove and make all the cake tops level by cutting them with a bred knife; this can be skipped on the brown and blue cake, since they are going on top of the cake. Assemble cake according to pictorial steps; use the bread knife to cut/carve the cake. If frosting is too thick to spread, add small amounts of milk until the right consistency.

1 6 - Now that your cake is assembled, put it back in the freezer until frosting is frozen.

    7 -Cut off an inch (or enough to cut though all of the layers and a mountain) of the long side of the cake, so you are going through the cross-section of the subduction zone. This must be done when the cake is frozen for a clean cut.

    8 - Frost the cake! Split what’s left of the butter cream frosting into 3 parts, with one only being ½ a cup. Dye the half cup of frosting with red food dye, and the others blue and green. Take the remainder chocolate frosting and frost the sides, leaving the cross-section side unfrosted. Ice the top of the blue cake with the blue frosting.  Ice the top of the brown cake (the unfrosted part) with the green frosting.

     9 -Now take the red frosting and scoop/pour it into a corner of a sandwich bag. Push the frosting into the corner fully and twist the bag above the frosting level (so the frosting won’t come out the top when squeezed). With a pair of scissors cut a very small amount of the tip of corner off, now you have a piping bag. Squeeze the bag to make the frosting come out.  Draw the melting subducted ocean plate, the magma, and the magma chamber on the unfrosted cross-section side of the cake.  Add lava to the top of the mountain(s). Done!

Explanation:

       You can use this model as a fun education tool if you wish to put the time into making it. You can mark features with a toothpicks that have been labeled with letters and give students a quiz, or have toothpicks labeled with the features and have them place them in the correct location on the cake. After the learning session, the students can be rewarded with eating the display.  For older students, this could be a possible project for them to do for a science class.

Possible food allergens: gluten, lactose (milk, butter), and eggs.

By Sara Nieuwenhuis