“Thunder Cake”

Picture Book Buds are a fun and easy way to incorporate literacy into nature study. Read a book (you can even read it outside!) and then enjoy the related activity and snack suggestions!

Thunder Cake

Written & Illustrated by: Patricia Polacco

This is a beautiful book about a young child and her grandma baking a cake during a thunderstorm to distract her from being scared. So many kids can relate to this feeling and you can take it further and learn about storms. I like to think that learnig about the science of storms makes them less scary and it has definitely helped my kids. Also cake. “It’s Raining” by Gail Gibbons is a great nonfiction starting point. And “Mushroom Rain” written by by Laura K. Zimmermann and illustrated by Jamie Green is another interesting tangent to take (more on that when you get to the snack!) There is a recipe for the author’s thunder cake in the back of the book, but as a celiac, it wasn’t doable for me. I took that opportunity to take a deep dive into ingredients that were related in some way to storms and lightened and my version of the thunder cake was born.

Rainy Weather Activities

First, read “Thunder Cake.”

Next try a science experiment.

Simple Rain Experiment

Make a water cycle in a bag! This is a super simple way to visualize why it rains and where the rain comes from. As the bag sits in the window the sun heats up the water. It begins to evaporate and condense at the top of the bag. Once it gets heavy enough it will rain back down to the bottom of the bag. Note: this simulates the water cycle and how rain is formed, but it probably won’t work on an overcast day because it won’t get hot enough.

Materials:

• zip top plastic sandwich bag
• water
• food coloring (optional)
• marker (optional)
• tape

Method:

Draw a sun in the top left corner of your bag and clouds across the top. You can skip this step if you prefer, but its fun!

Put about an inch of water in the bag and add food coloring if desired. Close the bag completely.

Tape the bag in a sunny window and wtahc what happens!

Lightning Experiment

So let’s get real, for most kids its the thunder and the lightening that is scary, not the rain. So here is an amazing experiment that replicates lightning in the most amazing way! You can create an electrical charge by rubbing a balloon on your head. Lightning is electricity transferring from the clouds to the ground during a thunderstorm. The electric charge in a cloud isn’t made with a balloon, but from ice droplets bumping around and jostling each other. You are going to transfer the balloon charge to a fluorescent light bulb for this experiment.

Materials:

• a blown up balloon (rubber)
• a fluorescent light bulb

Method:

Turn off all the lights and make your room as dark as you can.

Rub the balloon on your hair for a few seconds.

Quickly place the charged balloon near the base of the bulb. The charge will jump tp the bulb and briefly light it up!

More Rain Fun

Another fun way to enjoy the rain is by making rain paintings. Get the instructions here.

A fun long term activity is to track the weather and your mood in your natural journal. After a week or so of keeping track see if you find a pattern in how teh weather might influence your mood. Read more and get the printable here.

Last, make a mushroom rain thunder cake!

Mushroom Rain Thunder Cake

This is a perfect easy cake to make during a thunderstorm. It only uses one bowl and doesn’t have any complicated preparations– just dump everything in together, stir and bake. It also uses olive oil rather than butter which I picked up from Aryan Goyoaga of Cannelle et Vanille fame and I love. There is no melting or creaming it’s just done. Last I hate icing cakes and generally find icing too sweet. So instead we have stenciled a cute little design on top. I use a hot chocolate mixture with mushroom powder because it’s super easy. (Something like this, although its not the brand I used- there are quite a few options) You could sub powdered reishi, chaga or lion’s mane and cocoa or chocolate chips if you preferred. Grab the template I used for teh stencil and read more about the connection between mushrooms and rain storms here.

Ingredients:

• 140 g light buckwheat flour*
• 100 g almond flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup greek yogurt
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 TBS vanilla extract
• 1/2 teas. almond extract
• 1 TBS baking powder
• 1/2 teas coarse salt
• 1/4 to 1/2 c of mushroom hot chocolate powder (you can very this depending on the strength and the brand, if you increase it substantially think about taking out some sugar to offset it)
• powdered sugar for dusting

Method:

Preheat your oven to 350° f. Grease a round 9 inch cake pan.

Weigh your flours into a bowl and then add all of the other ingredients. Stir until smooth.

Scrape into prepared bowl and cook for 40-50 minutes until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Cool in the pan on a rack for 15 minutes then remove from pan and allow to cool completely.

While it cools cut out all of the black spaces in the stencil diagram below. (Or make your own) Place the stencil on top of the cooled cake and sift a fine layer of powdered sugar over top with a strainer or sieve. Remove the stencil and voila! Thunder mushroom!