This cake was made for our Chemistry Club’s end of year potluck. I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do for the cake this time around as my chemistry ideas running out and most of the students have seen a number of my cakes by now. I asked a coworker for ideas and he came up with a good one.

Our (chemistry) building is being renovated so his idea was for the cake to be our building being demolished by a bucky ball wrecking ball. Our building isn’t being knocked down but the idea still worked. A bucky ball is something that the students are all familiar with. It is a spherical molecule with the formula C60 and it resembles a soccer ball. It is made up of 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons with a carbon atom at each vortex of each polygon (black sixlet) and a bond along each polygon edge (grey fondant). I shortened the building as if the wrecking ball had already torn through most of it cause otherwise it would have been way too much cake.

The building is cocoa banana cake and the bucky ball is vanilla bean cake. It was a huge hit with many saying it was their favorite cake so far :-)