Anyhoo, I started searching around on the internet to get some cake ideas and googled, what else, but “Anarchy Cake”. Well, I had been looking for design ideas, but it turns out there is recipe for anarchy cake. I loved what I found about it. This is from the website of food columnist and cookbook author Sara Perry.

” Faith Willinger improvised this unusual cake when she had a rather empty larder and company coming for dinner. It was immediately christened Anarchy Cake because, she writes, “With recipes, as with so many things, Italians are basically anarchists.” You might think the anarchy is in putting salad dressing ingredients-olive oil and balsamic vinegar-in the cake, but it goes beyond that. The idea is that you act like an Italian, which is to say you pretty much do whatever you want and it will still come out beautifully-the sign of a really good recipe.”

Of course, this struck me for many reasons. I am Italian and an anarchist and the idea that Italians are basically anarchists I find pretty great. I love the fact that food and anarchist politics are combined in this lovely way. I ended up altering the recipe a great deal. I added cocoa powder, to make the base cake chocolate. I used dried fruit rehydrated with water instead of fresh fruit. I substituted sunflower oil and apple cider vinegar for the olive oil and basalmic vinegar and I used corn starch instead of eggs.

I developed a great design idea, which didn’t quite come off as I had envisioned, but still went okay. I had remembered seeing spray on food coloring and I thought it would look like spray paint. So, I would do a fondant-covered cake with an anarchy sign spray paineted on. Well, it kind of did, but it took several coats to get good enough color, so it ended up not really being as neat as I’d hoped. It still turned out. When I get a picture, I will post it here.

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I got to make her birthday cake! A- wanted her to be able to eat some, but she didn’t want to give her sugar. It was a little experimental, but the cake turned out well. I used 1/2 of the sugar and substituted sucanat for the rest. I added 1/4 tsp of baking soda to the recipe to compensate for the heaviness of the sucanat. I also replaced about 1/2 of the milk with pineapple juice. I think the acidity of the juice also helped it rise.

I filled the layers with a raspberry/maple syrup glaze and used some sugar-made raspberry glaze to cover the outside…we didn’t give that part to Z-. Finally, I sprinkled some powdered sugar on top and made a dark chocolate candy spiral for the top, which I pulled off before serving.

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