Biology instructor, Shelly Perry, added a culinary twist to
her Biology lab recently as students were placed into groups and created cell
cakes. In fact, some might describe her
latest teaching style as, “taking the cake!”
Perry baked a round cake for each group and provided all of
the essentials—utensils, frosting, decorating items--for creating a scientific
model of a cell for discussion. Students
were also encouraged to bring their own decorating ingredients.
“This is a fun time for students to break away from
traditional book learning; and it helps with building memory skills,” Perry
said.
Students received grades for their cell cakes worth 50
points. In teams, the students worked
quickly, frosting their cake, some adding green dye if theirs was a plant cell. Students then chose various pieces of candy
to represent all the parts of a cell—nucleus, nucleolus, lysosome, membrane,
etc.—placing the different candy pieces on the cakes to create models of either
plant or animal cells.
Taffy was a popular choice for depicting cell membranes,
while cherry licorice was often chosen for golgi and green jelly beans were
frequently used for mitochondrion. One
team broke the “candy barrier” by using bacon strips for endoplasmic
reticulum. Students really got creative
when portraying the cell nucleus, with choices ranging from a giant Reeces cup
to a large glob of cotton candy! 
Students were graded based on their knowledge of each organelle,
not only identifying each part, but also describing the function. Science instructors, Br. Charles Manning and
Mrs. Betty Wallace assisted with the testing of each group. This is probably the only science experiment
the students will ever be tempted to eat!
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