Super Science Day!

Every once and a while, we like to step back from the books (or the computer) and do some hands on fun! Today's project was a spherical layer cake based on a Jupiter Tutorial that was really fun to see. The kid and I wondered if we could pull it off with less experience and far less decorating talent.

First we started with a regular cake mix, rather than a scratch recipe. I bake a lot and it's been my experience that cake mix is generally more consistent and reliable. Since we had a lot of experimenting going on, we decided to control one variable!

We started with a SuperMoist French Vanilla cake mix. The kid did all the work in these steps, including cracking the eggs. A tip we've learned- crack the eggs into a ramekin one at a time. If they get shells in them, it's far easier to fish it out of a single egg than a whole mix.

The next steps are clearly explained in the tutorial above. We started with a very small, tempered glass bowl and a white center. Once that baked (about 15 min) we took it out, cooled it and then nested it in the 2nd layer, a bright orange layer. Same step again, until the red layer you can see here. We found that the top was getting quite brown on the small inner layer, so we covered it all with the red batter to keep it from burning.

The first three layers, all cooked and ready to come out of the bowl. We used Duralex, but you can use Pyrex or any tempered glass as long as you stay below 350 degrees.

EARTH! Well... the Northern Hemisphere anyway! We weren't quite sure it was going to hold together because the layers were a bit cracked as we took them out of the bowl in the last step. There's nothing a little blue frosting can't fix! The kid put on the loosely sculpted continents.

Ta-da! Earth's layers from the inside out. And the cake was delicious!