Monday 13 January 2014

Collections through Cake: Bird's Nest Cake

Did you think our cake odyssey was forgotten, dear reader? NEVER! We are museum professionals and cake is a stalwart of our working lives. Our pre-Christmas #MusCake was made by Kirsty, a member of our Digital Team (previously Kirsty was our Natural Science Curatorial Trainee).

Kirsty drew on her egg-cellent work with the oology (!) collections to create a fantastic Bird's Nest Cake.


The nest and eggs belong to a Barn Swallow, which is a bird of open country. It builds its nests in sheltered location that are sheltered from the weather and predators. Their use of man-made structures, such as barns, stables and bridges, for nesting means that swallows have spread with human expansion.



The barn swallow builds a cup-shaped nest on a beam or a semi-circular nest if its built against a wall. The nest is made of mud pellets collected in the beak and then lined with grasses and feathers. Males and females work together to construct the nest. Barn swallows usually lay four to five reddish-spotted white eggs.

The ‘cake’ is constructed of a milk chocolate-covered all-bran framework covered with dark chocolate truffle mud pellets. And a few feathers thrown in.



You can follow all our #MusCake adventures by following @LeedsMuseums on Twitter and by checking back on the blog! Happy cakery!





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