To say this cake was impossible left me feeling weird
January 22, 2021 10:26 AM   Subscribe

“My sister and her friends had to give a series of lessons on the geological sciences to a class of primary school kids. So she asked me if I could make a spherical cake with all the layers of the Earth inside it. I told her I couldn’t do it. ‘How do you get a sphere inside a sphere inside a sphere?’ I recall saying. ‘Oh yeah,’ she replied, realising what it would involve. I kept mulling it over until I had a breakthrough.”

Also, in response to how much attention the earth cake got: a Jupiter cake. Non-layered, seeing as we don't know much about the structure of Jupiter.
posted by ambrosen (32 comments total) 51 users marked this as a favorite
 
Wait, now I look a real fool for not reading the whole of the Jupiter post. Oops. Lots of layers in gas giants.
posted by ambrosen at 10:27 AM on January 22, 2021 [3 favorites]


That's so cool!
posted by wicked_sassy at 10:33 AM on January 22, 2021 [1 favorite]


I basically believe that any educational experience can be enhanced with the addition of cake.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:40 AM on January 22, 2021 [6 favorites]


AMAZING
posted by Going To Maine at 10:57 AM on January 22, 2021 [1 favorite]


(Much better than our old trend of everything turning out to be cake.)
posted by Going To Maine at 10:57 AM on January 22, 2021 [1 favorite]


For some reason, I now want a cake in the shape of an (interesting) hydrogen electron orbital. 3d maybe (the m=0 one)? It would be easier than these layers, but hard to support; unless there's transparent cake, in which case you could make the orbital part from opaque regular cake and the non-orbital part from transparent cake.

Ok now I want a 3d printer, except it prints cake.
posted by nat at 11:03 AM on January 22, 2021 [7 favorites]


I hope Wordshore sees this.
posted by JanetLand at 11:04 AM on January 22, 2021 [2 favorites]


Tbh the Jupiter one really is the more impressive of the two

cool stuff
posted by some loser at 11:05 AM on January 22, 2021


unless there's transparent cake

Would you accept gelatine as a substitute? That's basically the same thing, right?
posted by Johnny Assay at 11:12 AM on January 22, 2021 [1 favorite]


You could totally do 3-D molecules at gelatin art. Has anyone done a FPP on gelatin art? I'm kind of obsessed with that stuff, but almost everyone does flowers suspended in clear gelatin, and I feel like the potential of other shapes has not been sufficiently explored!
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 11:17 AM on January 22, 2021 [5 favorites]


this is so cool! thanks for sharing.
posted by ellieBOA at 11:19 AM on January 22, 2021


These cakes are so beautiful and inspiring! I think I would make the core out of chipotle mole rojo.

For the atom, spun sugar. that way superposition and up, down, chroma could be suggested.
posted by effluvia at 11:35 AM on January 22, 2021 [2 favorites]


I’m kind of obsessed with that stuff, but almost everyone does flowers suspended in clear gelatin,

Honestly probably the most impressive episode of Bake-Off this year, including the finale.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:40 AM on January 22, 2021 [1 favorite]


Well, sure, if you're OK with a huge seam at the equator...
posted by The Tensor at 11:41 AM on January 22, 2021 [1 favorite]


MetaFilter: Would you accept gelatine as a substitute?
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 12:02 PM on January 22, 2021 [1 favorite]


Well, sure, if you're OK with a huge seam at the equator...

Have you BEEN there?? Maybe there IS one!
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:03 PM on January 22, 2021 [3 favorites]


Since you can't see it, there's always a big seem at the equator:

"According to my astrolabe readings we're crossing the equator now, Captain"

"So it would seem, Mr. Christian, so it would seem."
posted by jamjam at 12:31 PM on January 22, 2021 [8 favorites]


There are the so-called raindrop cakes, but as others have pointed out, they're made with agar and gelatin and aren't really cake-like. But it might be possible to do something interesting and geological using the kinds of techniques used to make gelatin flowers.
posted by Lexica at 1:00 PM on January 22, 2021


How tall of a combined shot tower/oven would you need to drop cake batter from the top and receive perfectly-baked spherical cakes at the bottom?
posted by agentofselection at 1:13 PM on January 22, 2021 [2 favorites]


Based on back-of-the-envelope calculations the cake tower might be able to double as a space elevator, so there is some real synergy for planetary science here.
posted by agentofselection at 1:16 PM on January 22, 2021 [8 favorites]


Where's cortex? Menger sponge cake. You know you want to.
posted by zompist at 1:34 PM on January 22, 2021 [1 favorite]


Just drop thust and go on the float. Im ta nating.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 1:39 PM on January 22, 2021 [3 favorites]


Shot towers only work because the high surface tension of the liquid lead keeps the shot round despite the force of air opposing the shot's travel. Without that surface tension to produce layered spherical cakes you'd need to pull a vacuum on the tower and then have a dough that didn't evaporate in the vacuum before baking.

However once you have built a space elevator you could cook the cakes in microgravity allowing the weak surface tension of normal cake batter to create your spheres.
posted by Mitheral at 1:41 PM on January 22, 2021 [11 favorites]


While I wait for the space cakevator to be built, I'm going to need a series of progressively larger Æbleskiver pans. For science...
posted by sysinfo at 2:07 PM on January 22, 2021


The problem with spherical cakes is they tend to roll away. That's definitely why your cake is missing. It rolled away, I swear!
posted by rikschell at 2:23 PM on January 22, 2021 [4 favorites]


A spherical cake is pretty easy to make in zero-g, perhaps the easiest kind of cake to make without gravity, in fact. Of course, it might be difficult to bake it evenly, but maybe you could spin it near something that's radiating a lot of heat... oh well, good luck turning a cake like that into a lesson about the structure of the earth.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:46 PM on January 22, 2021 [5 favorites]


Just drop thust and go on the float. Im ta nating.

...huh?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:09 PM on January 22, 2021


If you shut down your drive, your spaceship will naturally return to null gravity where baking a spherical cake should be much easier!
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:25 PM on January 22, 2021 [1 favorite]


I feel I would have learnt much more at school (and heck, university too!) if my teachers used cake.
posted by Jubey at 6:34 PM on January 22, 2021


Where's cortex? Menger sponge cake. You know you want to.

There is prior art! Here's a topologically correct one with holes through the middle, but I actually prefer this solid 2-color construction where the "holes" are a darker sponge, like a Battenberg that looked too long into the abyss. That latter one is stable enough to stand up to cutting, and so can show off cross sections through the diagonal of the sponge with the distinctive six-pointed star analogue to a Sierpinski carpet.

Not saying I won't try at some point tho.
posted by cortex at 8:20 AM on January 23, 2021 [3 favorites]


I wish I had the patience to make that second cake cortex.
posted by kathrynm at 9:50 AM on January 23, 2021


Wait, no tectonic plates? No atmosphere? Dilettantes. You guys are going to turn these kids off to geology FOREVER.

(Now I am contemplating the viability of a liquid mantle of pudding, upon which chocolate plates sit)
posted by Mayor West at 10:59 AM on January 23, 2021 [1 favorite]


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