Biology nerdiness -- the incredible edible cell!

Prepare yourself for a very nerdy post with actual information about biology and cells but also a lot of candy and some pictures so there.

I actually really like biology. This is weird, because I'm not generally a science person (seriously, so much love for people that love ALL THE SCIENCES and also those who can understand ALL THE SCIENCES or, even more so ALL THE MATH... because I can't. :P). I take biology with a bunch of other kids (around my age) at a co-op group and my teacher is a lot of fun too. We do a bunch of awesome weird stuff.

For this week, we were assigned (well, additionally to the routine crazy homework that is crazy) to make "An Incredible Edible Cell" (I didn't come up with the cheese-y name.).  Basically, we had to make plant or animal cells out of completely edible materials and it was *suggested* that we make it something we'd all actually want to eat (as in not combining a bunch of things that are edible but gross when put all together).

So Wednesday, I spent QUITE A WHILE (probably like 3 hours on the whole project, an hour of that was baking time...) making my plant cell. It was pretty cool though, it turned out really close to the illustration diagram thing I used from my book (Apologia: Exploring Creation with Biology). I learned a lot from the project too because I spent forever staring at the diagram thing and then had to write up what each of the parts actually *do*.

In case you want to make your own incredible edible cell or you're just interested in the whole thing for some reason, I'll dish on all the things I used to make my plant cell and all of the other specific-ish details. Maybe you'll be bored but I worked forever (not exaggerating at all. hahaha. except I am.) on it, so I'm SHARING:

The finished product.

Ingredients to make your own plant cell and each thing represents:
-Cake mix (to prepare as directed, it's like a base for all the other things...)
-Vanilla White Frosting (Cytoplasm)
-Licorice pieces (Cell Wall)
-Orange Airheads (Plasma Membrane)
-Vanilla layered wafer cookies (Mitochondria)
-Gummy worms (sour or regular or both.) (Endoplasmic Reticulum/ER)
-Colored sprinkles (Ribosomes)
-Jujyfruits (Orange/Green) (Leucoplasts and Chloroplasts)
-Sweet tart (Nucleolus)
-Reese's Cup (Chromatin)
-Shark Gummies (other nucleus stuff)
-Smarties (other vacuoles)
-Blue Airheads (Golgi body)
-Wilton's Blue Sparkle Gel (to depict the central vacuole 

How I did it:
I baked the cake as directed in a sheet pan (plant cells are the rectangular kind). Then, I let it cool and frosted it for the cytoplasm. Next, I lined around the edges of the pan with licorice for the cell wall. I cut the orange airhead into strips to line around the inside of the licorice as the plasma membrane. In retrospect, to save a step, I probably would've just gotten sour patch straws which would've looked the same-- but the airhead worked. Then, I cut a piece of the Reese's cup off so it had a flat edge, and on the flat edge I lined up a beheaded shark gummy on its back. I put them on the cake to represent the chromatin and the nucleus. I put a sweet tart in the middle of the Reese's to represent the nucleolus. After that, I lined up some gummy worms on either side and then cut pieces of them and connected them all on the cake. I put clusters of sprinkles by some of them for the Rough ER and left the other side without for Smooth ER. I sprinkled some other 'ribosomes' around the cake as well, and put some more gummy worms for more ER around too. Then I put an oval-ish kind of shape of the blue sparkle gel to the right of the nucleus/etc for the central vacuole. Following that, I trimmed some of the vanilla layered wafers to be more oval-ish, placed them around the cake for the mitochondria, and squiggled some blue sparkle gel on them. Then I folded and twisted the blue airhead and put it on the cake as the Golgi body. I put some peach smarties around the cake for the other vacuoles. I placed green jujyfruits for chloroplasts and orange for leucoplasts around as well. FINALLY, for my assignment, it was required that you labeled everything with toothpicks and little signs so I did put those in.

After you're done... (again)! :)

Lastly, I brought it to class where we voted on each other's edible cells for three of them to get awards for either 'Most Accurate', 'Most Attractive', or 'Most Disgusting'. Oddly enough, mine won for most accurate (I didn't think it would...).

That's the certificate for proof. Haha! Oh and the blacked out thing is my teacher's signature. None of y'alls business. :P hahahaha. Also the thing in the top left is a dancing flower. The winners got those too. Odd, right?

After the voting and the class devoured my cake. That was pretty cool too. I guess it wasn't bad for a cake mix... now is not the time for me to declare my general war stance against cake mixes... anyway.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free. Thanks for reading!