Monday, May 7, 2012

Rubber Chicken Cake



 Since it was my turn to make a dessert for our after Easter get together, I decided it should be a semi-traditional cake....in a ring shape, with green shredded coconut as nesting material, and a chicken.......but not just any chicken....a rubber chicken. So after Googling many fine images, I made a couple sketches then set to work sculpting the little thing out of coloured marzipan....very much the same way I would make little sculptures out of dough......but you use icing sugar, not flour, to keep the paste from sticking to your hands.
 It turned out a little larger than I had planned, but it still fit fairly well on the cake.  By the time we got to my mother's house, the chicken had sagged a bit, but that helped it look more rubbery. I'm happy to say the cake was a big success and the beak was the first part to get eaten! I had a foot. Some of the others had the wings and one of my nieces happily devoured the head.
My kids and I also did a variation on a rainbow cake. It's more difficult to control where the colours go than I had thought it would be. It seems the colour you want in the middle should go (as batter) into the pan last.

Local Wildlife

 We've been bombarded lately with multitudes of Red Admiral Butterflies. They love to find a sunny spot and soak up the warmth.
 I was lucky enough to have these ones open their wings while I came near, because a few of the others clamped their wings shut as soon as they sensed they were being watched.

 Also, we've been getting a lot more raccoons around...there were two in the big Elm next door the other morning. It was around 7:30 AM and they were just settling in, so I managed to get these photos!