In case you didn’t know, February 12th is Darwin’s 202nd birthday, and that means you’ve got a perfect opportunity to practice your culinary baking skills. That’s right: it’s time for us all to “Bake a Cake for Darwin.”
There’s already a few such culinary odes here and there on the internet, but the Beaty Biodiversity Research Center and Museum in Vancouver has been doing this in full on celebratory style since Darwin’s 200th birthday in 2009. Over the last few years, they’ve seen some pretty cool entries and you can see many of them here. In fact, here’s a close-up of a cupcake from a dessert entitled, “A Phylogenetic Tree of Darwin’s Books.”
Anyway, you too can participate! If you’re game, all you need to do is bake an evolution-themed cake and then show it off for all to see by uploading a photo onto Flickr, and tagging it “darwincake.” Even better, you can tag it and also enter it into this Flickr pool. Note that the cake doesn’t have to be fancy, as illustratedd by one of my favourite past entries, “The Primordial Ooze.”
Plus, if you’re in Vancouver, you can even bring along your dessert to Vancouver’s Beaty Biodiversity Museum. The fine folks there will be hosting their 3rd annual local bake-off in their gorgeous atrium on Friday, February 11th. It starts at 4pm and note that everyone and anyone is welcome to check it out.