Monthly Archives for May 2013

New Stonehenge Cakes: A Quick Post to Catch Us Up!

Stonehenge cake at Stonehenge Drove, spring equinox

Stonehenge cake at Stonehenge Drove, spring equinox

The Stonehenge cake, a sub-genre of the Stonehenge=you-can-eat category, is one of the most popular forms of small Stonehenge replica. And this brilliant photograph also falls into the rarified category of Stonehenge replicas AT Stonehenge, one of only three that we can remember, including Straw Echo Henge, and a film including a small trilithon model used by Stonehenge scholar Professor Richard Atkinson to demonstrate how he thought Stonehenge was built. Rarified company indeed! So far we know the henger of this cake only as Tracey’s sister, but we will NOT REST until we have wrested the truth from wherever it lies!!! Well, we might actually rest. One needs sleep, after all, and anyway, most of you (pretending here that our theoretical readers have any basis at all in reality) probably do not care a whit who made it. Still.

Another picture of the cake, made for the birthday of one ONj Le ChAØs

Another picture of the cake, made for the birthday of one ONj Le ChAØs

Quite a nice cake! Note the trilthon horseshoe facing the three-lintel stretch. One wonders, did they read Clonehenge first?? Score: 8½ druids, to match our former winner, which was made by Sharon Barwell of Iced Moments, Nottingham! Our thanks to Hengefinder Francis Stoner for bringing it to our attention!

While we’re on about cakehenges and Stonehenge cakes, here is another recently posted on the wall of the Clonehenge Facebook group, which is where you can see pictures of most of the things that end up here well before they, well, end up here.  (Yes, we know how bad Facebook is, how it’s killing our bees and forcing corporate seed ownership and cutting down rainforest, killing indigenous children, clubbing baby seals and fracking the land, thus poisoning our water [We MAY have got it mixed up with a few other corporations there. Never mind. We work in broad strokes], but, hey, it is also convenient, so we’re all in!) And anyway, much more important than anything in those parentheses, here is the other henged cake.

From the Archaeology Tea Club, made by Kaitlin Mckenna

From the Archaeology Tea Club, made by Kaitlin Mckenna

This cake is, obviously, lovely, and by all accounts it was scrumptious, too. The new twist here is on the sides of the cake: remains of those who were buried at Stonehenge, skulls and all! Clever, we must say. Our 8½ to the others forces us to give this one 8 druids, the buried remains almost making up for the limitations of space on top and the resulting limits to realism in henge form! Our thanks to Nicola Didsbury for bringing this one to our attention!

Lovely cakes, and proof that henging is nothing like an all-male obsession. It has been brought to our attention that it would be useful for us to post lists of all of the henges we have posted, according to category, for example, a listing called Edible Henges with categories under it like Cheesehenges, Cirtushenges, Cakehenges, etc. There must be some edible henges that don’t begin with the letter C! Carrothenges? Damn. Aaaanyway, yes, we should do that. We could list miniature outdoor henges, planetarium henges, woodhenges, gardenhenges, and so on. If only we were that kind of people, that Organised Kind of People! Alas, we are not. That’s why there is a search box at the right of the blog!

Our concession will be to list the cakehenges we have listed so far. Mind you, we have not posted every Stonehenge cake we’ve ever seen, so any list will be partial in the larger sense. We will proceed to do so, any day now, on the end of this post, so watch this space! We mean it. Come back in a day or so and be amazed!

Until then, kind friends, happy henging!

Addendum: Cakehenges We Have Known:

Cakehenges come in two main categories: a) Primitive lintels-over-uprights constructions, and b) sculptured Stonehenges. When we started out, we gave great scores to the first kind because we had never seen the second kind. We begin this list with the simpler variety and work up to the works of art.

1. A Cakehenge for Morris Dancers, posted in December 2009.

2. Let’s Call it Cakehenge, posted in July 2009.

3. Cupcake-henge: You Know You Want It!, posted in March 2009.

4. Cakehenge, Done Right!, posted in April 2009.

5. Gingerbreadhenge, An October Classic, posted in November 2009.*

6. Celebrating Sixty: A Battenberg Cakehenge (by our royal celebrity guest blogger!!), posted in October 2012.

7. Icing Henge: Perhaps the Ultimate Stonehenge Cake!, posted in January 2010. (With this one, we leap with both feet into the second category!)

8. Cakehenges and Word Fields, posted in June 2011. (Actually 2)

9. Best Stonehenge Cupcakes Ever!, posted in August 2011.

10. Let Them Henge Cake: Sweet Stonehenge from the Land of Robin Hood!, posted in May 2012.

and…

11. A Little Stonehenge, Cucumber, and Eleven!, posted in January 2010. (Its own genre of Stonehenge cake, based on Spinal Tap.)

*seems to us there have been more gingerbreadhenges, but enough is enough!

There you have it, folks! And that doesn’t include sconehenges or that one of French toast wrapped in bacon.

Compulsive Stonehenge Making: A Serious Psychological Problem!

(Attraction Dance Group Performance: Stonehenge makes its brief appearance from 16 to around 28 seconds into the performance.)

People clearly cannot help themselves! Lately the Stonehenge replicas have been showing up faster and faster, not just new replica, but new KINDS of replicas. The one in the video above, for example, is created as part of a “shadow dance”, in which dancers’ bodies create silhouettes resembling things, in this case Stonehenge, as well as the Tower Bridge, and so on. (But who cares after Stonehenge, really?)

Another recent television Stonehenge replica bit appeared on the Conan O’Brien show, when the musical group Fall Out Boy did a Spinal Tap tribute that included the legendary miniscule trilithon being lowered onto the stage:

Now, let us explain you a thing: the more involved you get with Stonehenge replicas, the less enthusiastic you become about Spinal Tap. Every time a Stonehenge replica is mentioned, some tiresome wag, impressed with his or her own cleverness, has to make a remark about it being crushed by a dwarf or quote lyrics from the song in the movie. If we had time we would do a blog of those comments and title it, Adventures in Nope. Still, we have to count the above performance as an appearance of a Stonehenge replica. Grudgingly.

Meanwhile, we have been seeing more small replicas: a Stonehenge cake, a careless foamhenge, a school project replica, a Stonehenge of wotsits, and, inevitable now that 3d printing is all the rage, a 3D printed Stonehenge!

3D printed Stonehenge by MakerBot

3D printed Stonehenge by MakerBot

There is also a small, rather Picasso-esque Stonehenge someone’s mum made for her garden, but permissions are pending, so it will have to be posted later if at all.

We are now convinced that the compulsion to make Stonehenge replicas is emerging as a serious psychological problem, and that it should be listed in the DSM as Compulsive Henging Disorder. By early recognition of this burgeoning syndrome we might be able to stem the tide of Stonehenge replicas of every material and description that could inundate the world of the future, a tsunami of Stonehenges threatening to overwhelm the world as we know it and create a Clonehenge apocalypse of unimaginable proportions!!!

What? Yes. Yes. It IS a load of bollocks, actually, but we have to fill the blog somehow. The point, however, should not be lost: something is forcing people to build Stonehenge replicas and making them think that it is their idea. Is it possible that Stonehenge itself is an alien life form seeking to reproduce itself by infecting the human mind like a virus or like the fungus that infects ant brains and makes them climb to a high point where a bird is likely to eat them? Is it possible that by the end of this sentence we will decide it’s time to end this post?

Possibly! It remains to be seen!

Until next time, friends, happy henging!