Edible Science Project

My son had an extra credit project to do for school to show the Earth's layers. We wanted to do something unique and fun together. We finally decided to make a multi-layered cake, then to cover the cake we decided to make a cool cover decorated like the earth!  To make the different layers of cake we used some food coloring and different frostings!

Once we decided on the colors and decor, it was action time!  For the "crust", the outermost layer we used crumbled up chocolate cake. For the "mantle' we used red cake and red tinted frosting and decorated with red licorice bites and red sprinkles.  For the "outercore" we used a mix of vanilla and chocolate frosting and decorated with malted milk ball crumbles which look like little pebbles. For the "inner core" at the very top, we used chocolate cake and chocolate frosting. We made it look like a dirt pile by mushing crumbled chocolate cake into the frosting!

Voila!

In order to get this to school securely, we need to have some sort of cover, so we came up with the idea to make one that was the "world". When you removed the outer earth, it would reveal the layers. We thought that was pretty clever, but it took us a long time to figure out how we would make something like that! Luckily, I stumbled on a great tutorial:  How to Build a Cardboard Geodesic Dome. This was great because we have a lot of cardboard at home!  You basically need to cut out a number of paragons and triangles to make the dome.

Then, you can construct them and hold them in place with duct tape!  Then it was paint time! Luckily we had some poster paint around.

That was it, we now had a nice cover for our Earth Layer cake!

We can't wait to hear what his grade was! This was super fun and Joey loved doing it!