Spring of 2019 was my second semester of being a TA (teaching assistant) for the popular Cornell University course PLPPM 2010/2013 Magical Mushrooms and Mischievous Molds. The main course had over 300 (!) students this year and I also taught smaller lab section to 27 students every Friday morning at 10am. Last year (with a lab section at the same time), I noticed that my students were always pretty sleepy and it was sometimes difficult to motivate them even though the class itself is meant to be very fun and hands on. We identify lichens, blow up balloons using yeast, and even grow our own oyster mushrooms among other things. So this year I came up with a plan to keep my students (and myself) more engaged in the class. I’m always looking for ideas for creative baked goods and what do college students like better than free food, so I decided to bake up something themed to each class lecture that I could use as a teaching tool and the students could enjoy eating at the end of class. This ended up working remarkably well. I was really excited to come up with a new creation every week and my students always looked forward to the end of class wrap up. Throughout the semester my class had a really nice feel of community and I didn’t catch a single person falling asleep! So here are the 9 weeks of bakes below with descriptions of what the class learned from each. I’ll also start posting recipes for each one and link them in, in case any other TA’s or other mycology/plant pathology enthusiasts are interested in trying them out for themselves!
Week 1: Mushroom Meringues
Week 1: Introduction, mushroom cultivation, and mushroom meringues. For week 1, we started off slow and introduced the class with a quick experiment on mushroom cultivation. I whipped up a basket of meringue mushrooms. The class was on mushroom cultivation so I thought it was appropriate to make them look like Agaricus bisporus, one of the most cultivated mushrooms around the world. We discussed how many mushrooms you find in the store; cremini, portabello, button mushrooms and so forth are all the same type of mushroom at different growth stages.
Week two: Dung Fungi and Pilobolus Poop Emoji Cupcakes
Week two: It was time to ramp it up. This weeks class focused on dung fungi. Our always adventurous teaching coordinator had made the trek out to the Cornell barns for some horse dung at different timepoints and patiently waited for fungus to grow so we could see fungal succession (Majority Zygomycetes to ascomycetes and finally majority basidiomycetes) under the microscopes. At the end of class I called a student up to the front to answer what kind of fungi was growing on the cupcakes (Pilobolus, aka the shotgun fungus, a zygomycete) and about how many weeks old he thought the dung was based on fungal presence. Afterwards everyone enjoyed a funfetti cupcake with chocolate cream cheese frosting and spun sugar pilobolus.
Week 3: Yeast/Mold Control and Cinnamon Rolls
Week 3: We did an experiment testing the efficacy of household cleaners on mold using yeast as our model fungus. At the end of class I asked the students for hypotheses on which household cleaner would work the best and what other treatments might be used to kill yeast and other fungi. One of them said you could kill fungi by increasing the temperature really high and, personally, my favorite way to kill yeast is a hot oven. To demonstrate I made cinnamon rolls for the class. I added on some gold star sprinkles since they just finished their first exam.
Week 4: Powdery Mildews and a giant chocolate cleistothecium + mini buckeye cleistothecia
Week 4: This week was probably my favorite. The focus of the class was identifying powdery mildews by examining cleistothecia under the microscope and working through a dichotomous key. This was the first plant pathogen focused lab and I really wanted my students to remember this! I had one of the students come up to the front of class for the wrap up and unveiled a giant chocolate cleistothecium. You can see the action unfold in the video above. The cleitothecium was made of a giant chocolate ball with black licorice appendages and filled with asci (easter eggs) which in turn were filled with ascospores (m&ms). I also made slighlty smaller cleistothecia for each of the students in the form of mini buckeyes. For those of you who don’t know what a buckeye is, they are a delicious candy from Ohio made of a ball of peanut butter truffle (peanut butter, butter, powdered sugar, almond and vanilla extract) which are then chilled and dipped 3/4 of the way in chocolate. There is a picture below and they really look pretty similar to a bursting cleistothecium (minus appendages) as well.Buckeye cleistothecia for all the studentsA close up of the giant cleistothecium
Week 5: Koch’s Postulates, Exceptions, and Petri Dish Pies
Week 5: Sometimes timing just ends up being perfect and so when the class on culturing fungi and Kochs postulates happened to fall on pi day (3/14), I couldn’t have been happier. Actually it was the day after pi day, but still… I gave a lecture on Koch’s postulates and exceptions (viruses, obligate pathogens ect.) and the activity was to isolate Cochliobolus from inoculated corn plants. At the end of class I had three students come and identify the “pathogens” growing on three panna cotta filled “petri dish” pies. They got the Cochliobolus pretty well, and concluded that the yellow plate must be bacteria or yeast (its actually supposed to be Xanthomonas, the bacteria I work on which is known for its distinctive yellow pigment), the last one was a bit tricky, but because they had learned about powdery mildew the previous week they got it right that powdery mildew is obligate and can’t grow on plates (which is why there’s just a mint leaf covered in powdered sugar on the plate).
Week 6: Bread Week and Babkas
Week 6: This week was pretty easy to come up with a baked good since it’s bread day! We’re learning about how we use yeast to make delicious bread. At the end of class we talked about ingredients that go into bread (yeast, water, salt, flour) and then what other ingredients can be added. My personal favorites are butter and chocolate so I made a babka (enriched with butter and milk) filled with peanut butter and nutella swirls.
Week 7: Mushroom Identification, Amanitas, and Chocolate Mushroom Truffles
Week 7: This week was mushroom identification week with a bit of a focus on Amanitas. The students had a lot of fun going around to different tables and IDing the various mushrooms using dichotomous keys. We also talked about materials and knowledge you need to be a successful mushroom forager. At the end of class I pulled out this bread basket full of mushroom truffles. Two of my students answered what additional characteristics they would look for on these mushrooms to identify them as amanitas (volva, rung, gills ect.) and decided that if these were out in the wild they probably shouldn’t eat them. Fortunately these particular mushrooms were made of white chocolate, filled with earl grey infused ganache and marshmallow stems, so they were quite tasty and altogether edible (as was the basket).
Week 8: Lichen Identification and Lichen Cream Puffs
Week 8: Was all about lichens. We talked about how lichens live, what partners are involved in the lichen symbiosis and what the forms of lichen are. The actvity was to identify lichens using a dichotomous key and then to go outside in front of the Plant Science Building and find lichens on the trees and stones in the garden. Afterwards the students identified the “lichen” growing on these cream puffs as a crustose form and chowed down.
Week 9: Graduation
Week 9: Brought us to a close. The students had been working hard on posters focusing on a specific groups of fungi and we spent this class looking at all their hard work and reflecting on a good semester. Many of my students were graduating so I made these little mushroom cupcakes with graduation hats to celebrate. The cupcakes were funfetti with cookie dough buttercream filled white chocolate domes and chocolate grad hats with a licorice tassel.
Conclusions: This was such a fun semester for me and I hope for the students as well. There are so many ways to represent our research as mycologists, microbiologists, and plant pathologists and baking is a great way that I can share my love of the field with others.
