Shiva sutras

The Shiva-sutras are kind of a code-breaker for Panini's Sanskrit grammar (written probably around the 5th century BCE). Through 14 sutras - each consisting of a collection of phonemes and a code letter - it is possible to refer to any morphologically (is that a word?) significant selection of the Sanskrit alphabet through a two-letter code, thus making the grammatical rules that follow more concise and more silly-sounding. If you want a better explanation than that, go ask Wikipedia! As you can see, the alphabet is painted onto the cake surface, whereas the code-letters are vertical chocolate pieces (painted with white chocolate to make an easier writing surface). Shiva's drum, from which the sutras were supposed to have emanated, is in the centre. This was another team effort with Matt (who indeed did all the writing) this time as an exam- congratulations cake for our favourite Shiva-sutra-reciter: Victor.

Linguistic analysis

I wanted to start with my first ever academic cake - the amazing mandala of sponge cake and marzipan that me and Hannah created in 2003 - but I am having scanner issues. So here is this June's creation of the six levels of linguistic analysis represented through concentric circles - a joint project with Matt for the Philologists' lunch here in Oxford. Symbolism, from the centre out: phonetics (plain sponge), phonology (choc chip plain sponge), morphology (choc choc sponge), syntax (ginger parkin), semantics (carrot cake) and pragmatics (fruit cake). If you want to know the academic justifications for each flavour you will have to ask Matt. Please note (and appreciate) that when completed, there was no indication that there were different types of cake within, so when dished up it led to cries of 'ooh - it's got internal structure!'. Note also, we had to bake six cakes in order to make one cake, so there were five cakes leftover...

Showing off our cakes

It is becoming increasingly difficult to describe the amazing cakes that have been created in the House of Eternity, so I have been told that it is about time I embraced all this new-fangled technology and got a blog, in order to share my photos of the baking-creations. I still refuse to go on facebook though, just so you know.

Naomi