There are kids’ projects that are ho-hum for the adults, and there are kids’ projects where even the grown ups in the room say “Wow!” This project definitely falls into the latter category, a homemade geode rock – that just so happens to be edible too. You’ll need to be patient for this one; t takes about 4 days, start to finish… But nowhere near the hundreds of thousands of years required for a real geode!

To make our own geode, we first needed to form crystals: Make a supersaturated sugar solution by dissolving 3 cups sugar in 1 cup boiling water. Wait until you can’t see any sugar crystals on your spoon, to ensure that the solution is ready.

Fill a bowl half way with flour, then press aluminum foil in to the flour and pour in your sugar solution. Cover with additional foil and let sit for 2 to 3 days – yes 2 to 3 days!

On the third day, I thought we hadn’t been successful, seeing just a few sugar crystals floating on top of the sugar solution. But when we lifted out our foil and poured off the excess sugar solution, we were left with a beautiful geode! We turned this upside down on a paper towel and left it to dry out for another full day.

The “geode” broke into a few smaller pieces as it dried, but even the adults in the room were dazzled by the resulting rock candy. I haven’t eaten this stuff since I was a child at the science museum, and it was very neat to have made it right at home.

Travis happily crunched on the smallest piece, before I stopped him because we weren’t quite done making our rocks look like rocks.

In order to do that, we melted vegan chocolate chips in the microwave at 20 second intervals until melted, about 1 minute total. Brush the melted chocolate over the outside of the rock (leave the jagged “geode” side uncovered.

As the finishing touch, we crushed two Newman O cookies and sprinkled on the resulting “dirt.”

That is one beautiful geode!