Penguins Love Cake

On the eleventh day of Christmas my penguin gave to me...

Eleven cakes with piping,

Ten bores with bristles,

Nine penguins dancing,

Eight milk bottles,

Seven owls (just seven?),

Six roasted chickens,

Five golden pastries,

Four wobbling jellies,

Three French badgers,

Two turtle bars,

And a pelican in a pear tree

A cake-obsessed penguin doesn’t need much excuse to share yet more beautiful iced creations. And the choice between bagpipes or baking is simply no contest whatsoever!

These cookies* are so wonderfully vibrant and intricate. I love that they're bright and elegant - especially with baking, the two so often seem to be mutually exclusive. What I'd give for such a steady hand with a piping bag...

Mehndi cookies from Sugar Sugar Creations

This cake looks just like something out of a fairytale... it seems too perfectly imaginary to be real, and too superlative to even be called a cake. And that's before you start in on the pistachio sponge with cherry and caramel sauces...

Bûche Elixir from Christophe Adam

It's a little like the squiggles I draw on very long phone calls, made festive. And tasty...

Faith cake from I Am Mommy

Oh, my sainted aunts! Oh, my ears and whiskers! Look at this cake!

Amazing floral cake from Abigail Percy on Flickr (she also has a blog)

Chocolate shavings aren't all that unusual, but I'd never come across icing shavings before. It looks so delicate and pretty, a little like oddments of ribbon...

Raspberry cupcake from Linda Nguyen on Flickr

This might not meet the definition of a cheesecake, but what else could you call it?

Charcuterie cake from Debbie Does Cakes via Design Fetish

These iced cookies are a little reminiscent of embroidery hoops - such lovely, tiny details...

Spring cookie assortment from SweetAmbs on Etsy

Bird's nest usually suggests some sort of muddled thing (much like a penguin in the early morning, perhaps), so this cake is definitely something a little different...

Bird's nest cake from Magpie Cakes via Camille Styles

Whereas these cupcakes have less of an organic feel, and a bit more of a lean towards psychedelia...

Fancy florals cupcakes from Icing Dreams (also on Flickr)

This has the simple, delicious and perfectly rustic thing down pat. Perhaps I'm getting a bit of a thing about vegetables and cakes*...

Carrot cake from Answers en Croute (it's the ones growing out of the cake that just make this, I think)

And, while this final cake reminds me very much of a storm in a tea cup...

Stormy cake from Threadcakes

... I don't think the icing obsession is going anywhere just yet!

* It's called guilt, thinks the penguin, hopping off the interwebs in search of a salad