The Edible Piñata

My thumb, you’ll be happy to know, is back in business – which means I can freely type again with both hands (joy!). On a completely unrelated note, if any of you ever had any doubts about the resources available in Papua New Guinea to, say… build a piñata, here’s your answer:

Last week, our good friend Leah celebrated her 27th birthday with a fiesta: enchiladas, sombreros and all. Amanda and I were commissioned to bring the cake, and so (at the risk of turning this blog into a Pseudo-Pioneer Woman entry) here’s what we did.

First, we considered our options: Sombrero Cake, Gila Monster Cake, or Piñata Cake. Each option had its difficulties, of course. I had attempted the first about six years ago at my friend Andrew’s birthday fiesta, and on that particular occasion the brim of the hat caved into the head of the hat which caved into the rest of the hat until what resulted was an amorphous pile of yellow crumbs with some sprinkles on top. The second option would have looked spiffy, no doubt, but it really had very little to do with Leah and even less to do with a Mexican fiesta. And so we went for the less practical, but blissfully challenging task of making something you’d rather hit with a baseball bat than eat.

After some preliminary pancake designs to test its structural soundness, we began with the legs. Tinker-toys, of course, were needed for support:

Next, the body, complete with candy inside:

Festive-colored icing to decorate it:

And finally, some oreos for the eyes.

It took a solid afternoon, but the joy on her face when she found candy inside was worth every minute and tinker-toy.