Question

Keith 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

Keith wants to bring a total of 96 cupcakes to the bake sale, and he has already made 36 cupcakes. Thus, the number of cupcakes he still needs to make is:

\[
96 - 36 = 60 \text{ cupcakes}
\]

The recipe calls for 8 tablespoons of butter for a batch of 12 cupcakes. To find out how much butter is needed for the 60 cupcakes, we first determine how many batches of 12 cupcakes are in 60:

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

Since each batch requires 8 tablespoons of butter, the total amount of butter needed for 5 batches is:

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

Now, to convert tablespoons to cups, we use the fact that there are 16 tablespoons in 1 cup:

\[
\frac{40 \text{ tablespoons}}{16 \text{ tablespoons/cup}} = \frac{40}{16} = \frac{5}{2} \text{ cups}
\]

Thus, the amount of butter Keith will use for the rest of his cupcakes is:

\[
\boxed{\frac{5}{2}}
\] or 2.5 cups.