Death by Chocolate Trigonometry

All right, I can't help it...we are a pretty nerdy family. There, I said it, my daughter loves, and I mean LOVES math. She's taking trig as a sophomore and is doing, well, let's just say really good. Anyway, she climbed in the van the other night after tennis practice (that's a whole other blog entry) and started to tell me about her trigonometry assignment that was due next week.

Emily: Mom, I have a big trigonometry assignment we...blah blah blah blah (at this point my eyes have glazed over)... so I thought I would make a big cake (oh, something that caught my attention) and then I would....blah blah blah....with cupcakes around it. What do you think?

Admittedly the only thing I understood was that I needed to make a big cake, and some cupcakes and have stuff for her to draw on the cake with. I told that sounded great, when was it due? I remembered that Allison the Younger had a ginormous cake pan (ok, it was really a 16" round) left over from a smiley face cake she made a couple years ago. So I snagged that, then I called her and asked how many cake mixes it takes to make a cake that big, turns out it was 4! The whole thing turned into a family project that consisted of me making the cake and cupcakes, Scott finding some plywood that we could support a cake that bigon and creating a cover that wouldn't mess it up, Emily doing all the decorating and figures, and of course her little brother making comments such as "I can't believe you're doing your homework on a cake!"

Well, Scott and Emily took it to her teacher this morning and...needless to say, it was a hit.