Cake Hour Cackle: Seeing Blue Before the Patriots lost the Super Bowl

Today was our pre-Super Bowl cake hour. A couple of our cake people scoured Providence visiting a few bakeries so that they could come up with appropriately themed sweets. They found what they were looking for at the Scialo Bakery on Federal Hill - the Italian part of Providence. The main street through it is Atwell's Avenue and at the entrance there is big four legged arch type thing with a pineapple in the center of it. The pineapple is a symbol of hospitality and presumably that is what this archway is all about. You are being welcomed to Federal Hill as it were. The pineapple also has a long social history...who knew. For more info check out http://www.levins.com/pineapple.html for the complete history of the pineapple. And you thought it was just something that the Dole corporation crushed and canned!

The Providence pineapple arch!

But this is all getting away from the Super Bowl cakes. We had two to choose from. One was a standard layered chocolate cake with a butter cream frosting. Said frosting was chocolate. On top there was a heart shaped cookie with the message "Go! Patriots" I'm not sure that is the best punctuation for the particular message but who cares. The cake was also adorned with red and blue florets, stars and things since these are the Patriots' colors. The effect might have been better with a vanilla frosting - red, white and blue - but we probably preferred the chocolate. So it was red, brown and blue instead.

Two boxes today!

Sciala Btothers from Federal Hill...we know it well!

The New England Patriots pre-Super Bowl confections!

GO! Patriots. ????

Not quite Red, White and Blue but it's chocolate!

And a cute widdle football cake!

The brown however would tie in with the other cake which was shaped like a football and was predictably brown in color. Maybe they only made one batch of frosting for the two cakes! The football cake was cute and inside it was yellow marble cake. Both cakes were very good. Moist a là Duncan Hines and at room temperature so the frosting was not congealed. The big chocolate cake went over especially well.

The cake was good but those colors are starting to look scary!

As an added treat our new student researcher, who moonlights with her twin sister as a pastry chef, brought in some green tea macaroons that she had baked herself. This was the second batch of macaroons that she had brought in and both were delicious - perhaps the best macaroons she had ever had praised one of the tasters. This is a very auspicious start to a research career and we're looking for more good things in the future. All in all the Super Bowl cake hour was very successful with only minor glitches. Our Dr. Taub look alike is a Giants fan so fortunately he stayed away. There may have been a few other Giants fans in the crowd but they kept a low profile.

New student with an additional treat!

Green Tea macaroons! Healthy to be sure!

Well done ...we could get spoiled!

How many of these are closet Giants fans??

Don't look at us!

I may be from Jersey but I am rooting for the Pats!

We had to wonder, however, what was the coloring in the blue frosting. This had a tendency to linger on the tongue and I don't mean like a fine wine or gourmet cheese. We had a couple of blue tongues to show in one case quite awhile after consumption.
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