AP Art History Students Create Cakes Based on Famous Works of Art

Fridays are the most deliciously artistic days in Eileen Dormer's AP Art History Class at in North Caldwell.

Each Friday, a couple of students make "Cake Boss" presentations about a famous artist. As part of their presentation, the student must create a cake based on their artist's work. As a result, students have created beautiful cakes, ranging from red velvet to chocolate, featuring the work of modern artists, French impressionists and even architects.

Andrea Barbosa, a senior from North Caldwell, did a recent project on Sultanate architecture and created a cake resembling the Taj Mahal.

"I picked this topic because I wanted to do something different," Andrea said. "This project was really fun. I am not a baker so it was really hard to come up ideas on how to make this cake."

As a result, Andrea said she was up to 2 a.m. constructing the building out of red velvet and vanilla cake layers and white icing.

Teacher Eileen Dormer said that A.P. Art History is one of the most information dense courses, requiring a prodigious amount of memorization with images from prehistory to the 21st Century.

"I realized in the first year of the program that I would need to introduce as many memory-jogging techniques as possible, and the cake masterpieces are one of them," she said. "On 'Food Fridays,' two students in each class give a Power Point presentation to their peers, along with copies of sets of notes for each student's future use."

"The piece de resistance are the cakes, decorated to resemble one of the most famous works of the artists," Dormer said. "Year after year, students have evaluated this part of the course as 'pure genius' and a big reason to come to school on Fridays."

She added, "It does seem as if the way to the brain is sometimes through the stomach."