Twinkie Cake

The paper reported the 75th birthday of the Twinkie on Tuesday, and the photograph they had on the front of the Living section was of a birthday cake made of Twinkies with a "75" candle on top. Chris & I had flashbacks.

We love Twinkies. Unabashedly. We're both incurable sugar addicts. So for our funky, off-beat wedding party we had (in addition to our beautiful tartan-covered cake made by these wonderful folks) a Twinkie cake which my mother lovingly crafted out of day-old Twinkies. It didn't taste as good as if they'd been fresh, but the structure was more stable when they were a tad stale - we tested it.

You have to also understand, my mother is something of a cake architect. She's taken requests for my nephew's birthday parties since he could talk (it's her only grandchild so far, so you have to forgive the doting). In years past, she's made:

• a house that was burning down (clumps of matches stuck in at various parts and then set alight) with Hot Wheels fire engines outside waiting to put it out
• a police car with little flashlights for headlights and a toy car's siren that were embedded inside the cake and actually worked

This year he requested Minas Tirith, the white city of Gondor from the Lord of the Rings. My mother had no earthly idea what the hell he was talking about, so I sent her as many pictures I could find. The results were smashing. But you should judge for yourself:


It was made of stale store-bought cake, with cardboard at the center for stability. The "warriors" are made of slightly-warmed Tootsie Rolls, and each carries a toothpick for a weapon. You can't really see it well, but she even made a Mumakil out of Tootsie Rolls. Oh, and in the picture on the right you can see the "beacon" being lit... Then the little pyromaniac didn't want to blow it out...