Classicists Bake Things
If there’s one thing Classicists like, it’s [ablatives absolute] combining Classics with other things. It’s also food. Hence why so many people responded to our call to share Classically-themed baked goods! If you need inspiration for your next department party, discussion section, or wedding, look no further. This post has everything: cuneiform gingerbread, tetradrachms, a lamb roasting on a spit… And if you want to get baked, read on, and you may even find a mutilated herm cake! (Stefon, what’s a mutilated herm cake?) It’s that thing, where Alcibiades gets really drunk and chops the dicks off a bunch of statues, and then 2,000 years later, some grad student makes a cake out of it for a friend’s birthday!
Katy Blanchard shared her Sugar Cookie Forma Urbis, but you may also know her from gingerbread cuneiform cookie fame:
Aven McMaster tried re-creating a loaf of bread from Pompeii AND discussed it on her podcast:
A group of her students also baked cookies on the last day of her class on Sex & the Body in the Ancient World. “There were also some with white sprinkles, for old men.”
From Melissa Funke, a papyrus cake baked by her students for a presentation on papyrus letters from Roman Egypt.
Neha Rahman made a carrot cake from leftover carrots from her Classics department’s wine and cheese.
Here’s a cake Torie Burmeister baked for Ovid’s birthday for a seminar on the Metamorphoses. It’s “not exactly themed in appearance, but it was *for* him.” (Not pictured: marble cake)
Not a baked good in the traditional sense, but roasting is kind of the same, right? The ASCSA lamb roast, via Flint Dibble. “It’s always a good time, and we have saved some of the bones for science.”
Helen Forte made gingerbread biscuits from moulds cast using Samian ware stamps she made with Graham Taylor (@Pottedhistory).
Ayelet Haimson Lushkov with a cake she calls “Written in the Stars,” complete with Roman “medallions.”
Rob Cromarty tried to recreate a well-known tetradrachm.
From Karen Carr, Moretum dip (homemade ricotta, vinegar, oil, cilantro, parsley, garlic) and homemade crackers. Recipe thanks to Cathy Connors.
Michelle Mercedes shared numerous baked goods, included a cake that UC bought from Kroger for the birthday of philology (according to Nietzsche) that coincided with the undergrad Semple presentations. (Look at the spelling).
“The next year they went with a nice local bakery called The Bonbonnerie who did much better.”
An aegis Medusa cake by @GreekMythComix. “Jelly snakes obviously went first.”
@ByzantineFork made a mutilated herm cake for a fellow scholar’s birthday last year.
Rachel Hart had leftover butter cookie dough and “got a little weird with the rest (my πολύτροπον got burned pretty badly on my opening-lines-of-the-Odyssey cookie).”
From Chelsea AM Gardner, the cake of cult continuity, baked by the amazing Samantha Henneberry (and shared with her permission) during their regular year at ASCSA.
From @BSGDClassics: “I have sometimes made black figure inspired cupcakes when we have an open day. If I’m short on time then Roman honey biscuits go down well too. Open day is usually close to Halloween tho and people always thinks the helmets are bats.”
From the Homer Multitext summer seminar Dutch pancake night, via Casey Dué Hackney.
@pokemaniacal’s speciality is the Attic chocolate-figure cake, but the trireme isn’t too shabby.
