Hear No Cake, See No Cake, Eat No Cake

Amelia Stebbing

For my participation assignment I wanted to challenge my friends to complete a task without the use of all of their senses. I had one friend blindfolded, one with headphones, and one with tape over their mouth, then had them attempt to bake a cake together. This project forced them to find new ways to communicate in order to complete their objective. We tend to rely too much on what we have, and rarely consider the frustration that losing one of our senses would cause.

Ingredients

• Eggs
• Cake Mix
• Vegetable Oil
• Milk
• Flour

Part 1: Baking the Cake

1. To begin, I gathered all of the primary ingredients in order to make the first part flow smoothly
2. Each participant was given their handicap: Darrell was handed a blindfold, Sydney a face bandana, and Skylar loud headphones.
3. Only Sydney was allowed to look at the directions and tell them to Skylar, who then yelled to Darrell the tasks he had to complete.
4. Sydney utilized hand gestures and miming to explain to Skylar the directions, while Skylar yelled to Darrell and occasionally guided his hand to the right place. Darrell then was able to successfully add the proper ingredients.
5. ISSUE 1:
While the directions were being followed smoothly, the fast pace of the oil made it difficult for Darrell to judge the right amount to put in the pan. Despite Skylar yelling "NO", too much oil was put in.
6. Sydney then put the cake in the oven

Part 2: Making the Icing

*To increase the difficulty, I made Darrell retrieve all of the ingredients for the icing without anyone's physical help. While Skylar could direct him, he still had to find the milk in the fridge, the vanilla on the counter, etc without anyone physically guiding him.

1. To start the icing, all of the new ingredients had to be mixed together, this time with the use of much smaller measuring cups.
2. ISSUE 2:
While the making of the cake was clean and seamless, pouring the flour into the bowl sent flour all over the microwave and sink, as it was more difficult for Darrell to judge where the bowl was without Skylar's hand guiding him.
3. Next, Darrell was tasked with using an electric mixer all on his own. While Skylar was allowed to hold the bowl in place, only Darrell could mix. While I thought this would end in disaster, it was actually perfect, as no icing was sent flying against the walls.
4. ISSUE 3:
Whlie the icing was going rather smoothly, Sydney and I had noticed that the cake was looking more and more alive and bubbly as it cooked; the opposite of what was supposed to be happening. However, we decided to leave the cake in for longer, assuming it was due to the fact that it was gluten free.

Part 3: Final Decorating

1. ISSUE 4:
After all of our hard work, we pulled out the cake to find that it was coated in oil, so moist and saturated with it that icing it would have been impossible. While it looked perfect on the outside, touching it left a sheen on your fingers that was not appetizing. So, we decided to toss the cake and instead sat around taking spoonfuls of icing out of the mixing bowl.