The bake sale as high art

Published Mar 10, 2014

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Washington - Britain’s Art Fund, which supports hundreds of museums and galleries across the United Kingdom, has decided to test out a brilliant fundraising idea: a bake-off in which art fans across the land produce comestible homages to their favourite works of art.

To provide inspiration, the Art Fund commissioned a selection of Edible Masterpieces. They include a sponge cake rendition of a Mondrian painting, a shortbread Wedgewood plate, and a Rice Krispies treat splattered with white and black royal icing à la Jackson Pollock.

“My main aim was to recreate the masterpieces so they looked as close to the originals, but also so they could be recreated by a non-baker too,” food stylist Kim Morphew said. “Everything used in the masterpieces is edible.”

One of the trickiest pieces to create was the Wedgwood cake, she said: “I really wanted the plate to look like a plate, so I experimented with the shortbread by baking it on different plates. Too much butter and the shortbread would break, too thin and it would catch on the edges of the plate and break when I iced it. In the end I succeeded with a totally edible plate.”

To recreate Jackson Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm (No. 30), she put the Rice Krispies treat on a board on the floor. “I am a massive Pollock fan,” she said, “so when painting the crispy cake I used his techniques but with different coloured icings instead of paint ... to really achieve the Pollock feel.”

Art Fund recently launched a fundraising campaign (tagline: “Fundraising for Art: It’s a Piece of Cake”) to get art and food lovers to bake their own favourite edible masterpieces.

They hope that participants will come together on May 9 to host raffles or bake-sale events that will benefit Art Fund.

They’ve set up a website that includes recipes of the edible masterpieces seen here and a fundraising pack. – Kristin Hohenadel, Slate / The Washington Post News Service

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