Back in the 1800s, cupcakes were called “number cakes,” because the recipe used 1 cup of butter, 2 cups of sugar, 3 cups of flour, and 4 eggs (plus some milk and baking soda). The world’s largest cupcake crushed those numbers, though. Baked by Georgetown Cupcake in Washington, DC, it weighed 2,594 pounds, including 500 pounds of flour, 300 pounds of butter, and 100 pounds of cocoa powder, along with 200 dozen eggs! The question is, how many people did it take to eat it?
Lace up: If your cupcakes use butter, sugar, flour, eggs, and milk, how many ingredients (foods) do they use?
Jog: If you’re 4 feet tall and the world’s largest cupcake is 3 feet tall, how much taller than the cupcake are you?
Sprint: Which is longer, the distance around a cupcake, or the distance across it? Look at any circle to figure it out!
Hurdle: If your recipe instead uses 2 cups of butter, twice as many cups of sugar, and twice as much flour as sugar, how many cups is that so far?
High Jump: How many eggs are in 200 dozen, anyway?
Pole Vault: If 1 person can lift 100 pounds at most, how many people would it take to pick up this 2,594-pound cupcake?
Answers:
Lace up: 5 ingredients.
Jog: Just 1 foot taller.
Sprint: The distance around a cupcake is longer.
Hurdle: 14 cups of ingredients, since you add in 4 cups of sugar and 8 cups of flour.
High Jump: 2,400 eggs.
Pole Vault: 26 people, since 25 people could lift only 2,500 pounds.
