Keeping Cool On Australia Day

The Australia day holiday isn’t really long enough to get away terribly far unless it bookends neatly with the weekend*. Much as I wish it was longer, there’s something fun about a mid-week day off. So many options for small pootles – wandering to a beach or a park, maybe having a gelato, catching up with friends and maybe ending with a batch of baking, or just a snooze in a shady spot with a good book. Lovely!

But if I had longer (and bottomless pockets), Antarctica would be one of my dream destinations. And in the middle of a Sydney summer**, it’s even more appealing. So this cake seemed like a perfect fit for today, with its holidaying penguins...

Penguins on holiday cake from Threadcakes

The sheer scale of the cake (or cakes, as each penguin is a separate cake, not just the polar bear) is quite astonishing. A total of 17 individual cakes*** assembled with 8 batches of buttercream, hand carved, and with the ingenious addition of rice krispy treats (now there’s something to do with them) to form the smallest penguin and some of the other details.

A bit like an iceberg, it’s what you don’t see that really (polar) bears some thinking about...

Happy Australia Day – hope you find a fun (and tasty) way to keep cool!

* Surely the spirit of patriotism would dictate that a three-day weekend is, if not quintessentially Australian (after all, plenty of other places get three-day weekends as well!), at least a very good idea, and a surivival target after the post-Christmas flatness (when you wonder when you might next get a rest).
** Even if the usual public holiday murk-or-bucketing applies...
*** And I love that they made almost every single component from scratch and not just out of packets - so amazing!