Part of Lesson Plan: "Health-i-fied Cake Mix???"

Activity Overview / Details

Return students' worksheets that they filled out the previous day.  Go through each kitchen’s cake.  Ask the kitchen which prepared each cake if they knew what their mystery ingredient was.  Discuss class results on favorites and least favorites.

Then reveal the mystery ingredients of each cake. This always generates quite a lot of laughter and fun.

Generate discussion with the following questions:

• Did you like the cakes?  Which ones?  
• How would it taste if they had frosting? How would this change your fat content?
• If you made them at home, you can see how one can decrease the fat and increase the fiber and still get a good product.
• Were you surprised at your mystery ingredient?
• Were you surprised that you liked some of the cakes with the unusual ingredients?
• Do you think you would try this at home?
• What are other fun ways you can add fiber to a cake mix?  (zucchini, beets, wheatgerm, etc…)

 If time permits, I have often baked a chocolate beet cake, or other recipe which uses a surprise ingredient so that kids can taste this as well as they are discussing the cakes they made.  If you do this, be sure to pass out this recipe to students who are interested in making it at home.

 Also note: if you are familiar with substituting ingredients in baked products, you’ve probably been advised online or in cookbooks to use applesauce. Interestingly enough, for every year that I have taught this lesson, the applesauce cake comes in with a minimal amount of votes as the favorite. Usually every year the white beans, the prunes, the carrots, and the sweet potatoes are the favorites.

Pass the empty cans around so students can read the labels and compare fiber content.