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!

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Stonehenge Aotearoa, New Zealand

new-zland

We just post them–we don’t try to pronounce them.

This is one of the big permanent Stonehenge replicas scattered about the globe. The original press release said: “A modern day version of the 4000-year-old English monument as it might have been, had it been built in the Southern hemisphere, Stonehenge Aotearoa, is backed by the New Zealand Government and Royal Society of the New Zealand, and is the brain child of members of the Phoenix Astronomical Society.”

New Zealand publisher Mary Varnham says in its defense, “I’ve been to both it and the original Stonehenge in Britain and there’s no contest: Stonehenge Aotearoa is by far the most interesting experience.” We can’t say, as we’ve only been to the original, but it no doubt depends on what you’re interested in.

Kudos to its builders for attention to astronomy and for a neat, clean presentation. For what it actually is, it could hardly be better, but as we rate things as Stonehenge replicas on this blog, and it skips the inner trilithons and many other aspects of the original, we’re giving it six druids. If we were Kiwis, though, we would definitely plan a visit!