Cake Hour Cackle: A fountain of chocolate bids the latest PhD farewell

Today was a twofer. A few of the graduate students were one day singing the praises of chocolate fondue. So of course we immediately forced, er, encouraged them to sign up for a cake time slot so they could show us everything that melted chocolate had to offer. They dutifully complied and the event was awaited with anticipation. It would then turn out on the same day we would be bidding farewell to the latest graduate of the Brown University PhD program who performed all his studies at our research center. (These PhDs are flying out the door!) Clearly we had to acknowledge his success and thanks to mother nature dumping a load of snow on the city on the day we were to honor him, we had to postpone it to the same day as the aforementioned fondue.

A chocolate volcano!

Preparing the spread

The healthful part of the offerings...

...add some carbs...

...and more carbs to fill out the selection!

A smorgasbord for drenching with chocolate!

Well why not kill two birds with one stone or more appropriately given the nature of research two mice with one trap? No reason, so we bade farewell to our latest basic scientist doctor by holding a fondue party in his honor. The fondue ended up being a molten chocolate fountain and instead of dipping the goodies into it you held them in the fountain and let the chocolate flow. It was so fun and there was quite a selection of things to smear chocolate onto including fruit, macaroons, cream puffs sans cream, marshmallows, pound cake, vanilla wafers, rugalach, mini-cinnamon rolls, mini-carrot cakes and linzer cookies. The latter four were not intended for the chocolate but we wanted something to fill out the menu in case there was not enough stuff for the choco-feast. As you can see from the pictures everyone was having a dandy time or they were gratuitously smiling as if they were having a dandy time. The big surprise is that the person who functions as the food omniscienti and avoids cake time like the plague actually ate something! Heads turned and we tried to get a tell all picture but did not succeed.

Let me show you how!

The honoree gives it a try.

This is just so fun!!

Wasn't this a good idea!

Hmmm. good!

The crowd was pleased!

Just a little bit more!

Before sending our next soon to be postdoc to parts unknown we did our usual Brown University makeover and made sure he was equipped with a Brown coffee/tea mug to continue with his own cake time during his next escapade. As he had taken to skiing we made sure he had a fashionable Brown headband to keep those ears warm while plummeting down a slope. Add to that a water color of the Van Wickle Gates and a Brown hoodie (which he might have already had) and ta da - he's on his way unable to forget where he achieved his academic success. Güle güle ve iyi şanslar, Dr. Eken, and hayatını kek ve kayak dolu olabilir!