Soil Science Society of America | USA
Landscape with cover crops, trees and wetlands keeps soil healthy to produce nutritious foods.
I did the baking and decoration part completely. I enjoy cooking and baking sometime in between data crumbling or writing manuscripts to have a break and clear my mind. The hardest part of this soil-profile cake was to get the ingredients as I always do not keep all the colors at home. Luckily, the dry-fruits and fruits were there as I am going to bake a fruit-cake very soon. The plant twigs are from my porch and kitchen-window.
Recipe:
It is a simple layer of three different cakes. The bottom ‘C’ horizon is a fruit cake. The middle yellowish and whitish ‘B’ and part of ‘C’ are spongy white cakes with yellow color. The top ‘A’ horizon is a chocolate cake to represent that we need to preserve organic carbon in the soil layer, definitely in the surface layer of soil.
Special Decoration within the Cake layers and as Toppings:
To represent nodules and organisms in A and E horizons and pebbles in C horizon, I have used ground coffee, chocolate chunks and dry fruits such as grated coconut, sesame seeds, colored pieces of dried pineapples and cherries, bits of almonds and hazelnuts. To reflect dynamicity and non-uniform soil texture, I have added the colors, chocolate bits and dry fruits by hand after I poured the cake mix into the pans. I also used separated egg yolk and egg white parts for different layers so that it helps condense the colors that I want. The egg yolk part was used for the top and the bottom layers while for the middle two layers I especially used egg white so that it does not get burned to a dark color. The top brownish layer is due to organic cocoa powder and a spoon of coffee powder.
The toppings are different food decorative powders and chocolate bits which represent a nice landscape of agricultural fields, flower garden, roads, wetland-pond area and a stream on the left. I have put some chocolate bits and black swirls on the body of the cake to represent the soil organisms.
I used cuttings of Rosemary and Mint plants as the trees and plants over the cake.
The landscape on the top includes a flower garden with trees on the background, a stream with islands, a wetland pond and agricultural fields with plants and cover crops.
Of course, it turned yummy. My son tasted it all the way from the beginning till the end when all the layers were put together ...Happy Mom :).
I tried to represent the soil “Coarse-loamy over sandy or sandy skeletal, mixed, mesic, Typic Dystrochrepts”, it has depth of about 65 inches to the bedrock. The soil is very fine sandy loam with 0 to 3 percent slopes, well drained, rapid to moderately permeable with low water holding capacity. The soil reaction is acid, and the parent material is very fine sandy loam eolian deposits, underlain by fluvial deposits.
In my cake the dark top layer represented the dark surface layer of the Ap horizon. The light-colored layer below represented the leached layer which formed light color followed by the little dark color layer which is the leached iron-oxide layer.
The bottom gravely layer is the dark fruit-cake layer in my cake, and it represents the ‘C’ horizon as I mentioned earlier. As the iron oxide leaches through the Ap and B horizon and gets hardened in a layer in this soil, the drainage class varies, and the soil profile interchanges from rapid to moderately permeable soil.
As the soil is acidic and the texture is sandy loam, less tillage and covers are always helpful practices to reduce erosion and improve soil-health status.
The soil series can be found in the north-east of the USA, for example in Plymouth County in the State of Massachusetts.
Soil Science Society of America | USA
Landscape with cover crops, trees and wetlands keeps soil healthy to produce nutritious foods.
I did the baking and decoration part completely. I enjoy cooking and baking sometime in between data crumbling or writing manuscripts to have a break and clear my mind. The hardest part of this soil-profile cake was to get the ingredients as I always do not keep all the colors at home. Luckily, the dry-fruits and fruits were there as I am going to bake a fruit-cake very soon. The plant twigs are from my porch and kitchen-window.
Recipe:
It is a simple layer of three different cakes. The bottom ‘C’ horizon is a fruit cake. The middle yellowish and whitish ‘B’ and part of ‘C’ are spongy white cakes with yellow color. The top ‘A’ horizon is a chocolate cake to represent that we need to preserve organic carbon in the soil layer, definitely in the surface layer of soil.
Special Decoration within the Cake layers and as Toppings:
To represent nodules and organisms in A and E horizons and pebbles in C horizon, I have used ground coffee, chocolate chunks and dry fruits such as grated coconut, sesame seeds, colored pieces of dried pineapples and cherries, bits of almonds and hazelnuts. To reflect dynamicity and non-uniform soil texture, I have added the colors, chocolate bits and dry fruits by hand after I poured the cake mix into the pans. I also used separated egg yolk and egg white parts for different layers so that it helps condense the colors that I want. The egg yolk part was used for the top and the bottom layers while for the middle two layers I especially used egg white so that it does not get burned to a dark color. The top brownish layer is due to organic cocoa powder and a spoon of coffee powder.
The toppings are different food decorative powders and chocolate bits which represent a nice landscape of agricultural fields, flower garden, roads, wetland-pond area and a stream on the left. I have put some chocolate bits and black swirls on the body of the cake to represent the soil organisms.
I used cuttings of Rosemary and Mint plants as the trees and plants over the cake.
The landscape on the top includes a flower garden with trees on the background, a stream with islands, a wetland pond and agricultural fields with plants and cover crops.
Of course, it turned yummy. My son tasted it all the way from the beginning till the end when all the layers were put together ...Happy Mom :).
I tried to represent the soil “Coarse-loamy over sandy or sandy skeletal, mixed, mesic, Typic Dystrochrepts”, it has depth of about 65 inches to the bedrock. The soil is very fine sandy loam with 0 to 3 percent slopes, well drained, rapid to moderately permeable with low water holding capacity. The soil reaction is acid, and the parent material is very fine sandy loam eolian deposits, underlain by fluvial deposits.
In my cake the dark top layer represented the dark surface layer of the Ap horizon. The light-colored layer below represented the leached layer which formed light color followed by the little dark color layer which is the leached iron-oxide layer.
The bottom gravely layer is the dark fruit-cake layer in my cake, and it represents the ‘C’ horizon as I mentioned earlier. As the iron oxide leaches through the Ap and B horizon and gets hardened in a layer in this soil, the drainage class varies, and the soil profile interchanges from rapid to moderately permeable soil.
As the soil is acidic and the texture is sandy loam, less tillage and covers are always helpful practices to reduce erosion and improve soil-health status.
The soil series can be found in the north-east of the USA, for example in Plymouth County in the State of Massachusetts.