Stonehenge and Littlest Pet Shop, a Match Made in…the Oven!

Littlest Pet Shop/Stonehenge cake, photo used with permission

Stonehenge replicas? You must be weary of us bleating on about them. We’ve decided that for the next few posts we will talk about other, more widely varied things, like a children’s show called Littlest Pet Shop, some handmade glass marbles, the game of crazy golf, and a housing complex in the States, then maybe even a festival dedicated to old time car racing. That should get us out of our rut!

EXCEPT—there’s something that all of those things have in common. What could it possibly be? Hmmm… *drums fingers against head* Oh. Right—the picture at the top may already have given it away: STONEHENGE REPLICAS!!!! Surprise! We’ll bet you weren’t expecting that. Heh.

Yes, people of all gender identities, please observe the picture above. Behold the cake that is a mash-up of the children’s show Littlest Pet Shop and the millennias-old Stonehenge monument! A kawaii cakehenge. Who would do such a thing, you ask? The Ebola virus? A member of Parliament? Kim Jung Un?

No, it was made by a lovely lady called Alycia Maltby, who then posted a picture of it on the Clonehenge Facebook group (as all hengers should. It’s the law, you know.), seemingly with no fear of reprisal! She had two birthdays in her family, her father’s and her niece’s, and she decided to please them both with just one cake. We’re going to assume her niece is a Stonehenge fan, and her father watches Littlest Pet Shop religiously, but we could be wrong.

We confess we have, in the past, suggested the possibility of a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Stonehenge. This is not so far off from that. At first glance, we admit, we thought we glimpsed good old Twilight Sparkle. But this is even more remarkable for being original, and being a cake!

Score: 6 druids! When we started the Clonehenge blog many years ago, it wasn’t because of beautiful Stonehenge models rendered so truly to the real monument that it took our breath away. No, it was the result of having seen a Vienna sausage henge and then a cheese puff henge, and thinking, “All of humanity should see this!!!” (We think with a lot of exclamation points, okay? Neuro-punctuation experts are even now researching how to extract them.)

To this day we continue to award extra druids for being in the spirit of Clonehenge, and in this case, that more than makes up for the odd, leaning, partial Stonehenge we see before us. Cakes are only so big, after all. All of the work is beautifully done and the flowers and butterflies are, shall we say, the icing on the—er—rather, the cherry on top.

Our thanks to Alycia Maltby, her niece, and her father. May this inspire more, similarly wacky, people!

Don’t forget—we suggested the Godzilla/Hello Kitty mash-up a long time ago, and it’s still up for grabs!

Until next time, friends, happy henging!

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

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

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

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.

Celebrating Sixty: A Battenberg Cakehenge. (Please Welcome Our Special Guest Blogger!)

Battenberg Henge and picture by Sylvia MacPuss

Greetings, Readers! We have a treat for you today. Possibly. Clonehenge has never had a guest blogger, but a certain individual got in touch with us and proposed convincingly that he/she be allowed to give it a try. This person insisted on complete anonymity, but I don’t think we’re giving any clues when we say that he/she has never tried blogging before, or any kind of written humour, but is keen to give it a try. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for our Anonymous Guest Blogger!

Hello, lovely people! One is most pleased to have this opportunity to take part in this wonderful blog, which one has admired for so long. As a life-long resident of the United Kingdom and, indeed, of England, one cannot help but take pride in the glory that is Stonehenge and in the Stonehenge landscape, even if one’s ancestors arrived only one thousand or so years ago, much too recently to have been among those who built it! One has visited the great stones oneself and found that they have great and deep secrets to whisper to one who has deep feelings for this fair island that means so much to so many.

One also feels that humour is much needed in our society today. As part of a family or community in the modern day, people experience untold strains, such as, for a random example, the lascivious exploitation of one’s beloved grandchildren by a money hungry and uncaring media. Sometimes one can only turn to one’s dear pets and look about for a place to have a laugh. One has turned more than once to Clonehenge, among other places, to lighten one’s heart in the dark times and gain strength to carry on as one must.

The henge or, more properly, Stonehenge replica, one has chosen for one’s first timourous foray into blogging and humour is the delightful confection shown above. It was tenderly created by a daughter for her lovely mother, quite touching, for the mother’s 60th birthday. One hopes the celebration was as charming as the cake. One had a 60th celebration oneself recently and found it most heartening!

The cake the henge is made from is Battenberg cake, named after an ancestor of Prince Philip, your Queen’s husband, and a man one happens to know personally! (Once in a while, we are told, it is permitted to drop a name or two.) The replica itself, it is true, is no accurate depiction of the towering and enigmatic stones that loom, echoing with time, on the Salisbury Plain of our beautiful Wiltshire. Yet one gives it a score of six (6) druids, one more than recommended by the gracious people of Clonehenge, simply because it evokes in one a longing for one’s dearly departed mother.

One has seen other Stonehenge replicas. Just this summer past, one traveled incognito to have a gentle hop on Jeremy Deller’s ingenious bouncy replica, called Sacrilege. One was charmed, but after seeing this video of the two of them bouncing and discussing it, one could not help but think that if only one were younger, one would not have minded having a few bounces with Mr. Mike Pitts! On the bouncy Stonehenge. Because he knows so much about the stones. What?

Well, one can see that one is a failure at humour on one’s first try. Clonehenge has assured one that one may try again when one feels ready. Just the attempt has raised one’s spirits! Thank you very much to one’s Readers, whether or not they are one’s ~~subj~~ friends! And to Clonehenge. It has been wonderful to drop one’s persona and be utterly anonymous for a change. Bless you all.

And there you have it. Our first post by the anonymous guest blogger! We have one more thing to mention before we close out. Hengefinder General Extraordinaire Matt Penny has been down with the whooping cough. We ask you all to wish him well. We also want to remind him that we told him to keep away from those swans because no good could come of it! May he be back on his feet, flogging the Salisbury and Stonehenge beat, before another day goes by!

And until next time, friends, happy henging!

Let Them Henge Cake: Sweet Stonehenge from the Land of Robin Hood!

photo, cake, and henge by Sharon Barwell of Iced-Moments, Nottingham

Let them eat cake, that takes the cake, the icing on the cake, the cake is a lie… Cake seems to enter into a lot of cliches, or are they memes now?And those who have been to Discworld have no doubt met Mrs. Cake. There is even a musical group called Cake. Ahem. That may refer to a different kind of cake, but nevertheless… We have a henge to discuss here!

It is brilliant. Wonderful. Or as the rebel colonists say, Amazing! We let the builder, Sharon Barwell, tell it in her own words:

“My friend asked me to make a cake for her husband’s birthday back on 28th April and the brief was either a mole or Stonehenge…well there was no choice in my mind, the henge it had to be!

As Pagans they had a large merry meet and the cake was cut, but only after they had sliced the henge off and saved it for all eternity! FABULOUS! I was really pleased as even though it was all edible, I just couldn’t bear to see people eating my lovingly hand-crafted standing stones or even the fallen stones! Thank goodness for my own photographs taken each time I visit, and for the National Geographic website! I tried hard to keep it to scale and had fun carving each stone individually, seeing them come to life before me…It was time consuming, but no where near as hard work as it much have been for the Ancients!”

As we seem to recall they say in Nottingham, home of this baker/artist, “Marry, that meeteth my whole heart!”

We are usually leery of anyone who uses as many exclamation points as we do!!!!! But this someone is given a pardon for having made our highest scoring cake to date. Score: 8½ druids! For more pictures, see here.

She has, as she says, paid close attention to the monument as it stands now: where the uprights and lintels and even the fallen stones are, and even better, the shapes of the individual stones. The average person often doesn’t notice, but the stones of Stonehenge are not of uniform shapes, but each has a shape of its own. Ms. Barwell took the time to sculpt each one. Remarkable!

We have seen and posted a lot of cakes. You can see the three best here, here and (cupcakes) here. Oh, and this Spinal Tap related one here, cucumber included. They are all pretty wonderful, but this one, um, takes the, hmmm, prize, shall we say. We are pleased to hear that this henge will be preserved, hopefully somewhere away from ants and children.

What is it about cake that captures the imagination of the masses? Cakes are made in every shape and size, including pops. People leap out of them, and they play a part in weddings. They are so embedded in our culture, it is no wonder they are well represented in the annals (two Ns!) of henging. We know we will see more, but for now this is the one to beat! !!!! No one matches our use of exclamation points, Sharon, no one!

Until next time, sweet friends, keep an eye on the Olympics for hidden henges, and we wish you happy henging!

Achill Update and Pictures Without Stories

photo by seequinn on Flickr, used according to permissions

News on Joe McNamara’s structure on the Irish island of Achill, nicknamed Achill Henge. Mr. McNamara has been ordered to take down Achill Henge, pending a planning board ruling on whether the structure should be exempt from the need for planning permissions. We like the last sentence of the article: “Locals in Achill have speculated that it is ‘unlikely’ that McNamara will take the structure down.”

We know, we know, it’s none of our business, and people have a right to have their laws followed, but we just want to know what it was for and what the henge was suppose to look like when completed! Plus, let’s face it, where else in the world is there a greater advocate of Stonehenge replicas than here on Clonehenge? Our motto: Bringing you global news and intelligence on Stonehenge replicas in the internet since 1784!

Signpost to Achill Henge, again by seequinn on Flickr (We love this!)

1784 was a good year on the net. We remember the first time we got Wolfgang-rolled… But enough nostalgia.

While we’re posting for the first time in a while, we thought we would pass along some henge pictures posted for us by Facebook friends of the blog but without much provenance. If you can help by bringing us more information on these, please do. You can reach us on the Clonehenge Facebook group or at the email address on the sidebar.

A glass trilithon posted to the Clonehenge Facebook group by Bruce Bedlam of Stonehenge-is-a-building fame. Elegant.

and this cakey henge was sent us by friend of the blog Jez Reell. All we know is that it was created by Dominic Wilcox for Jaffa Cakes out of Jaffa cakes. What we like best about this is the reflection of the circle of trilithons on the plate. Well photographed! [Update May 8, 2012: We found the back story for this one here, thanks to Mike Williams–the shaman-y one.]

One more note before we go. We actually received an email from someone at CBS Sunday Morning, a news program in the States, asking to interview us in relation to a piece about what is real and what is fake. We sent our contact information, but they never got back to us. We now suspect that what they wanted was not an interview but a replica of an interview. They were right not to call back. Interview replicas would be a whole other blog!!

So keep your eyes open for new henges. Whether or not you are in County Mayo, have a good Saint Patrick’s Day tomorrow. And until next time, happy henging!

P.S.: If anyone knows the lastest news about or the current state of Achill Henge, a comment about it would be much appreciated. Thank you!

Cakehenges and Word Fields: the Plight of the Carbon-Conscious Blogger

photo from TheSugarSyndicate.com’s Flickr account
Believe it or not, we are swamped with new Stonehenge replicas of all sorts and you might think, if you were not in possession of all the facts, that we should be posting here at least a couple of times per week, if not every day. You could be forgiven for assuming we are just lazy.

But nothing could be further from the truth! What people don’t realise is that unlike other bloggers, who just use mass-produced letters and words, often imported from countries where they have been grown with pesticides by people who are paid sub-subsistence wages and who have no access to health care despite their crippling work, here at Clonehenge we personally grow every letter and every word ourselves, nurturing them with great care and at much expense.

This labour of love gives us precious little time for the fun of producing these posts for our adoring public, but because we know you are waiting breathlessly we tear ourselves away from the Palabra beanfields to craft these posts like drystone walls, turning and fitting each word and each letter until somehow they fit and balance to make the august edifice that is Clonehenge.

Today our topic is Stonehenge cakes, or cakehenges. The example above, beautifully done, was the 2007 creation of a Chicago-based bakery, The Sugar Syndicate, which is, alas, no longer a going concern. It is an outstanding example of the cakehenge genre, second only to our favourite, the mom-made cakehenge from New Zealand’s Vanda Symon.

photo by Siobhan Jess Sarrel

The confection in the pan above was posted on the Clonehenge Facebook page by reader Siobhan Jess Sarrel, about whom we know nothing, especially not how to pronounce her first name. She baked gluten-free brownies, used fondant to fashion the Stonehenge on top, and took it to a friend’s solstice party. (We do not know if Ms. Sarrel is in the northern or southern hemisphere, so we don’t know if it was a summer or winter solstice party.)

These henges have many things right with them. First, they are our preferred type–replicas of Stonehenge as it stands today. In both cases the builders looked at pictures of Stonehenge to guide their modeling. Both show the trilithon horseshoe and the three remaining adjacent lintels. Both show fallen stones.

The top cake is more accurate in scale and placement and also includes the bluestones. It is impeccable and professional looking. The brownies, on the other hand, are gluten-free.

This may not mean much to the average reader, but for us this is a huge factor. Not only are we at Clonehenge among those who are required for health reasons to eat gluten-free foods only, but it is a little-known fact that the original Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain IS IN FACT GLUTEN-FREE!!! Well caught, Lady S. J. Sarrel!

Scores? We give the Syndicate henge 7 ½ druids and Ms. Sarrel’s brownie henge a solid 7. We figure we don’t want to run afoul of any syndicate out of Chicago!

Well, it looks like we’ve just about run out of words that are developed enough to pick. We’ll have to let the fields grow a bit before we can post again. Here’s hoping the aliens don’t come by and ruin things with crop circles!

If you’re still hungry for cakehenges, find more here. And until next time, happy henging!

P.S.: What the hell is fondant, anyway? Yes, we know we could google it but the truth is we’re far too lazy. Oops.

Ginger Henge, a Druid Hut, and Some Holiday Disorientation Disorder!

photo sent in by Emily Hunziker, used with permission

And here is the second in our two part Hunziker series of henges! Yes, we know it’s Spring Equinox-ish/Easter/Eostre, and we’ll address that in our next post, but for now let us cast our minds back to three months and a week ago . . .

Ms. Hunziker writes: “The gingerbread henge came about this christmas time, when, for purposes of saving time, my family and our friend decided to combine our ginger bread house and winter solstice henge projects into one. We modeled our henge strictly off of stonehenge, making sure that there was even an alter stone and heel stone.”

You can see care was taken and Stonehenge was the model. Look at those bluestones, so rarely included in an amateur henge!

Then, “We connected our christmasy gingerbread village with this henge by having the the Druids live in a hut right next door.” That hut is the little roundhouse in the picture on the left. Well done, we must say!

And she finishes with, “Our friends and neighbors who come by appreciate the time and creativity we put into our projects but as we explain to them the ideas behind them (such as dolls made specifically to preform a “virgin sacrifice” that goes along with a henge made out of fish sticks or gingerbread) they smile, nod their heads, and back away slowly making no sudden movements.”

Well, that’s just a wise way to behave around hengers. Don’t trigger their chase response!

Score: 7 druids! They even have a place to live. We like this little set-up even if it is oddly horseshoe shaped over all. Having it open toward the viewer gives it a welcoming feel, not quite what the original Stonehenge builders were going for, but charming in its own right.

And at the end of the email she says, “lol. What can we say, we love it. Happy Henging!” We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.

Our thanks to Emily, Lauren, Russ and Eliza Hunziker and Lois Sisco for making this henge! Keep ’em coming!

Icing Henge–Perhaps the Ultimate Stonehenge Cake!

photo and cake by Vanda Symon, with permission

It doesn’t often happen that a homemade henge turns up in our inbox unsolicited, although we love when it does. You can imagine how delighted we were to receive an email from summery New Zealand with this beautifully crafted cake in it.

Made by mystery author Vanda Symon for the eighth birthday of one of her sons, this cake shows a remarkable degree of realism, from the proportions of the individual stones to the trilithon horseshoe facing the three intact lintels in a row, to the placement of the fallen stones. Very nicely done!

We asked why make a Stonehenge cake for an eight-year-old’s party, and Ms. Symon replied, “The now Eight-Year-Old has always liked things that are old, mysterious and cool – so he wanted a wonders of the world party and the birthday party cake was going to be a pyramid or Stonehenge. We’d discussed a big gingerbread pyramid, but that wasn’t “cakey” enough, so he thought Stonehenge would be great because it’s essentially round, and hey, a cake is often round. Practical boy. I’m grateful he didn’t ask for the Colosseum!”

And so are we! Score for this cake, 8 druids, one for each of the birthday boy’s years, and our highest ever for a cake!

Ms. Symon goes on to say, “The cake was a big hit with the birthday guests, and the whole thing disappeared at the party, so Hubby didn’t even get a piece! There was also one of those surreal moments where all of the little guests were happily nibbling away on icing henges, ten kids eating things that looked like big rocks. Naturally they were beautifully sugared up in time for their parents to come and collect them.”

And on her blog she adds, “Damn chuffed with it, actually. Amazing what you can do with icing.”

True, though it wouldn’t hold up for thousands of years in the British weather. Sigh–now we’re all hungry!

A Little Stonehenge, a Cucumber, and Eleven

photos by Somara aka snarkygurl, with permission

[Strictly speaking this is not a Stonehenge replica, but a replica of a Stonehenge replica. The rare clonehenge clone!]

What a movie! What a cake! The movie This Is Spinäl Tap made the Stonehenge replica a household idea. We’ve often wondered what percentage of the 250 and counting posts we’ve put up would be here if it weren’t for Spinal Tap. Well, there is no doubt about today’s entry!

The baker/artist and photographer writes: “A friend of ours wanted to surprise her husband with a Spinal Tap cake for his birthday. She didn’t care what it looked like, so I had free reign to do what I wanted. I like it, other than the part where I accidentally made the strap too long, and where I lost the wrestling match with the white frosting.”

Well, we think she did an excellent job. Even got that cucumber-wrapped-in-tinfoil in there although much reduced in size!

And, speaking of reduced in size, our focus is, of course, the little Stonehenge replica, a trilithon, actually. We like the way the colouring on it is marbled to make it look like stone. It is very nicely done. Plus, it looks delicious. We hope it was.

Please note that the dials on the amp do say 11. That’s one higher! By the way, you can see our other posts concerning Spinal Tap here and here.

Score: 5 druids. It’s not much smaller than the one in the movie, after all. And we’re guessing Somara had a lot less money to work with. It’s not easy to get this kind of likeness in an edible replica. Nicely done!

A Cakehenge for Morris Dancers

photos by Cricket Holman, used with the permission of Greenwood Morris

Out upon the green plain, wild horses galloped and played. If they noticed the huge lichen-encrusted stones that huddled in an ageless circle there, it was only to rub their shoulders or haunches now and then or to play hide-and-seek with those small colts still unable to run far. They took no interest, either, in the line of posts or strange piles of sweet white goo distributed about the area.

Hmm . . . it’s hard to make that work! We’re not sure why the horses, why the odd asymmetrical candle line or what the (possibly marshmallow) lumps are that are scattered about this cake. And then there’s that thing in the upper left hand corner. Many mysteries.

We do know this cake was made for a birthday party in November, 2008, a party attended by members of Greenwood Morris, a Morris Dance team out of Gainesville, Florida. More photos of the party may be seen here.

Score: a modest 5 druids. Tis is a rather simple henge, appropriate for the occasion. You don’t have to do anything elaborate in order to enjoy a henge at your next family, social or business occasion. Let henging in and watch your quality of life soar!. And absolutely no calories (as long as you don’t eat it).

[Cyndi Moncrief adds in an email: BTW, the marshmallow thingys on the cake are “Blancmanges”, made famous by the Monty Python skit of the same name.]

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