[Sca-cooks] Another TV-inspired cooking contest

[Elise Fleming]

Brangwayna Morgan wrote:

 >HRH Jana of the East has announced a Cake Sculpting contest for 
 >coronation.  The theme is "Medieval".  Cakes may be any combination of 
 >layers and flavors, with a minimum height of 2 feet and a maximum 
 >height of 4 feet.  They must be transported from the work table to the 
 >display table intact. There is a "Most Fun" category, as well as a 
 >"Historically Accurate" category, for which documentation MUST be 
 >provided.

 >Am I wrong in thinking that there is NO period documentation for doing 
 >this sort of thing with anything we would recognize as cake?  In that 
 >case, I can only assume the documentation is for what you sculpted it 
 >to look like.

Johnnae provided some examples of period cakes, but stacking them isn't 
the same as sculpting them.  I have not ever seen any reference to a 
"sculpted cake".  Cakes were fairly heavy things (Johnnae mentioned 
great cakes).  The consistency is not like modern cakes.  Nor are wafers 
or krasekake like a modern cake.  Unless I'm mistaken (a common 
occurrence lately!), trying to sculpt those two would result in a bunch 
of crumbs.

There certainly were edible things that were tall, but "cake" was NOT 
one of them.  The question would remain, does His Eastern Majesty have 
documentation that what he is proposing actually existed?  How could he 
tell what's historically accurate?  He'd have to have enough knowledge 
to judge the accuracy of the documentation.  Might be something 
interesting to "fake"!

Now, on another aspect, does he mean by "sculpting" what the TV shows 
mean when they say "sculpting"?  I am assuming so since he refers to 
combinations of layers.  Another problem: I haven't seen any reference 
to medieval or Renaissance "cakes" being made of layers.

Your Eastern Majesty, how about a tournament using light sabers?  Points 
to be given for documentation during medieval times?  Or speed texting?

Alys K., feeling rather obstreperous this morning
-- 
Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
alyskatharine at gmail.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8311418@N08/sets/