Archimedes's Circumscribing Pi-Cake

A sphere has 2/3 the volume and the surface area of its circumscribing cylinder. It's a beautiful, magical relationship, that I wanted to show off. This pi-cake is made with a sphere of French silk pie (crust and all) stuffed inside a cylindrical white cake with whipped cream frosting. It is delicious and amazing to cut into at any Pi Day party!

Step 1 Supplies

White Cake - 
- 4" tall cake pan with 8" diameter, one or two is fine, depending on what you have available
- cookie sheet
- 3 boxes of white cake mix
- oil, water, and eggs, amounts depending on what the cake mix requires
- cooking spray

French Silk Filling - 
- 2 cup butter, softened
- 3 cups white sugar
- 10 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
- 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 tsp finely ground black pepper, optional
- 8 eggs, room temp.

Pie Crust - 
- 2 1/4 c flour + more for rolling
- 1 t salt
- 3/4 c shortening
- 1/4 c capacity measuring cup
- 1/3 c capacity measuring cup
- 1 c capacity measuring cup
- 2 c capacity measuring cup
- kneader
- rolling pin
- pastry blanket for rolling out the dough
- foil
- all metal sieve with diameter just barely smaller than the cake pan
- kitchen twine

Whipped Cream Frosting - 
- 1 16 oz. tub of whipped cream, defrosted
- 1 16 oz. tub of whipped cream frosting
- wax paper
- tubes of writing icing

Comments

[cbutterball]

AMAZING. This pi cake truly captures the magical relationship between a sphere and its circumscribing cylinder. Archimedes would be proud (and full).

[jackson907]

Aww, thanks! I worked really hard on this. The end result wasn't as structurally sound as I would have liked, but I really cared about what it meant!