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Pastry chef Dinara Kasko serves up desserts in sweet shapes
Learning Objective: Students will create their own cake design using 3-D items and then find the volume of their “cake.”
Courtesy of Dinara Kasko
Dessert at Dinara Kasko’s house is always a surprise. It might look like a golf ball, or swaying pink pyramids, or even red cherries piled inside an invisible box!
Kasko is a pastry chef, and these strange and beautiful structures are all edible cakes.
Baking Geometry
Courtesy of Dinara Kasko
Kasko designs and makes her cakes in her kitchen in Kharkiv, Ukraine. On the outside, they resemble geometric shapes or familiar objects. But inside are layers of cake and sweet fillings.
Kasko’s cakes are influenced by her passion for
Courtesy of Dinara Kasko
Chef Dinara Kasko
Eventually she learned how to make molds for her tasty creations. This lets her invent entirely new shapes. “I don’t want to just copy what other bakers do,” Kasko says.
Making a Mold
To make her molds, Kasko starts by drawing a model of her cake on a computer. Then she creates the model using a 3-D printer. A 3-D printer is a machine that builds three-dimensional items out of layers of material. Next, she pours a rubberlike material called silicone over the plastic model. In a few hours, the silicone hardens into a flexible mold. Now it’s ready to be lifted off the plastic model and filled with cake batter.
Courtesy of Dinara Kasko
Apple cake creations
After she bakes the cake, Kasko carefully peels off the silicone mold. She often sprays the outside of the cake with a shiny, brightly colored glaze. Sometimes she adds decorations such as sugar lace or chocolate ribbons.
But she’s not done yet. Her final step is to share photos and videos on social media. “Just a few people get to eat the cake,” she says, “but everybody can see it.”
Kaskoʼs Cake
STEP 1: Use computer software to design a mold.
Courtesy of Dinara Kasko
STEP 2: Print a model with a 3-D printer.
Courtesy of Dinara Kasko
STEP 3: Make a mold of the design using silicone.
Courtesy of Dinara Kasko
STEP 4: Fill the mold, bake, and enjoy!
Courtesy of Dinara Kasko
Analysis
Answer the following questions on a separate sheet of paper.
Create a bar graph of your classmates’ cake volumes. Analyze the results. Did anything surprise you?
Which of your own cake’s boxes had the largest
If you wanted to double your cake’s volume by adding only 1 box, what could the dimensions of that box be?