Fractal Snowflake + Cupcakes = Serious Math
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
Math has never exactly been my forté. If it involves food, however, I'll give it a whack. On first glance these fractal snowflake cupcakes are seemingly simple, with a series of triangles and what have you thrown together to make a darling little shape that reminds me of arts and crafts time. How wrong I was. These cakes require some serious math. Lets break it down, shall we?
It all starts with a "simple" algorithm. The Koch snowflake algorithm consists of three identical Koch curves, which essentially make one large triangle. This triangle is cut into four smaller triangles made of blue fondant and then centered on another larger triangular base which is made of white fondant. This process of making four triangles from stretched blue fondant and adding a triangle of white fondant, then putting them together, stretching, and then making four more triangles is repeated until "the limit of your patience" or until the fondant becomes no longer manageable.
Now, I can't exactly say that I will be whipping out the fondant for this one, but I have nothing but admiration for the brilliant minds who are able to successfully complete the Koch fractal snowflake cupcake and would gladly eat one (or five) to show my approval.
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3 Comments:
This is one of my favorite fractals for its beautiful simplicity. I really don't like fondant though... What if you instead generated and 'koch snowflake' on a computer, printed it out, cut out the pattern and used it as a stencil? Then you could have good frosting on your beautiful cupcake.
If you used a computer controlled laser etcher to burn the frosting you could have the snowflake go to an arbitrary resolution too.
christopher at 10:25PM on 03/22/09
I prefer my baked goods without math.
But I suppose I'll eat them this way too.
http://bakingandmistaking.blogspot.com
cool2bars at 8:25AM on 03/23/09
Why? I just felt myself break out in a cold sweat, just like I used to when I was 14, sitting at the diningroom table at home, trying to figure out my geometry homework.
I'd much rather eat the cupcake without having to think about it.
juliebugsmama at 12:15PM on 03/23/09