Engineering of Cake

I, like most people, eat on a fairly regular basis. And I, apparently UNlike most college students, like to eat good fresh food with lots of vegetables. I appreciate my free seminar pizza as much as the next guy, but given the choice I love my own food.

I find cooking therapeutic, creative, and a darn tasty hobby. Every so often I try new things – experimentation and curiosity are the foundations of an engineering approach to life, after all. This past week I found myself with a bunch of extra orange juice to use up, so I decided to try my first ever two-layer cake.

I borrowed two round cake pans from my friend (must have the right tools for the job, right? first rule of any project). Carefully I baked the cake layers for an Orange Marmalade Cake. But then as I went to assemble the cake, I realized the recipe didn’t really have a frosting layer in the middle. Sure you are supposed to spoon some liquid between the layers, but really that’s nothing special.

Pretty from the outside, but no gooey middle layer... sad.

I was miffed. What’s the point of going through the hassle of making two layers, if you don’t even get a decent frosting layer in the middle?

Of course, I may also have been miffed because one of my layers crumbled a little bit during assembly. Poor structural properties…

So I was working in the kitchen, I was musing in my head. “Why bother with two layers?” I wondered, “Why not just make a cake pan that’s the shape of a tall round cake?”

In fact, why not just make a cake pan in the shape of the wedding cake? So much easier!

Oh wait!

Duh, Miss Outlier. I had the answer. It’s basic heat transfer, of course! If you had a tall, deep cake pan, then the outside edges would cook and burn before the middle was done.

So what could you do about that? As I continued cleaning the dishes, I pondered. What if you took the cake pan, and cut a hole out of the middle, so that you wouldn’t have a uncooked center?

Oh wait!

Duh, Miss Outlier.

But of course. The Bundt pan.

Okay, fine. So I reinvented the Bundt pan. But it was kind of cool to independently reach an engineering conclusion about daily life. As it turns out, although you may think the baking process could be simply modeled with the basic diffusion equation, there are a few complicating factors. In particular, the heat diffusivity does not remain constant over the baking time. And, you should take into account radiation and convection as well as conduction.

Sound like a journal paper? Indeed it does (and there are probably more than one, as the science of cooking is a well-established area).

Do you find yourself looking at everyday things with an engineering lens?

Properly engineered cake. Quickly devoured by labmates, which I think displayed success in both form and function.