East Brunswick 4th Graders Bake Cake Of New Jersey

EAST BRUNSWICK, NJ — It's an end-of-the year tradition in Mrs. Adriana Sarapochillo's fourth-grade class at Warnsdorfer Elementary School in East Brunswick: To bake a massive, four-foot-long cake in the shape of New Jersey and then decorate it with edible "facts" about the Garden State.

The students in her social studies class are each assigned one of New Jersey's 21 counties. They research the counties and present three top facts about each of them, Sarapochillo explained. They then must bake a plain vanilla cake in the shape of their assigned county, which they brought into school this week.

The cake is assembled and then decorated with the facts: For example, Gummy bears dot mountainous, wild Sussex County, known for its bears — and bear attacks. Swedish fish and an umbrella show beachy Atlantic County. Blueberries are sprinkled across New Jersey's farm belt of Burlington County. Edible totem poles show where the Lenni Lenape Indians originally lived in Camden County.

Some of the facts are fun: "iPlay America is located in Monmouth County," the students note. Other observations are more adult: "Bergen County pays the second-highest property taxes in the nation."

"It's just something we do at the end of every school year for fun, and we take a break from our regular curriculum to do it," said Mrs. Sarapochillo. "It's something I've been doing for the past fifteen years, always at the end of the school year. When I see older students come back and visit, I ask them what they remember about Warnsdorfer Elementary and they always say, 'The cake!'"

The fourth grade class then ate the cake yesterday afternoon.