Question

Elijah is baking chocolate cupcakes for the school bake sale. He made 36 cupcakes yesterday, and he wants to bring 96 cupcakes in all. His recipe calls for 8 tablespoons of butter for a batch of 12 cupcakes. How many cups of butter will he use for the rest of his cupcakes?
Hint: There are 16 tablespoons in 1 cup.
Write your answer as a whole number, decimal, or simplified fraction. Do not round.

Answer 1

To find out how many more cupcakes Elijah needs to bake, we subtract the number of cupcakes he made yesterday from the total he wants to bring:

\[
96 - 36 = 60
\]

Elijah needs to bake 60 more cupcakes.

Next, we need to determine how much butter he will need for these 60 cupcakes. According to the recipe, it takes 8 tablespoons of butter for a batch of 12 cupcakes. We can find out how many batches are needed for 60 cupcakes:

\[
\frac{60}{12} = 5
\]

Now, since one batch requires 8 tablespoons of butter, for 5 batches he will need:

\[
5 \times 8 = 40 \text{ tablespoons of butter}
\]

Next, we will convert 40 tablespoons of butter into cups. We know that there are 16 tablespoons in 1 cup, so the conversion will be:

\[
\frac{40}{16} = 2.5
\]

Thus, Elijah will use \( \boxed{2.5} \) cups of butter for the rest of his cupcakes.