Threescore men and threescore more

So, on a day where my anxiety about moving to a new town started to kick in, compounded by steady drizzle, eight flights of stairs and an unhealthy addiction to hardcore p0rn the second series of True Blood, I managed to create a successful AWW birthday cake.

After the consummate disaster that was The Wonderful World of Disney, I got to try my hand at an old skool nursery rhyme character.

Humpty is the sixth cake in the Book and the seventh in our quest. Some background trivia:
- Apparently the HD rhyme was first officially published in 1810
- It was originally designed to be mean to short fatties
- The original words were:

Humpty Dumpty sate [sic] on a wall,

Humpti Dumpti [sic] had a great fall,

Threescore men and threescore more,

Cannot place Humpty Dumpty as he was before.

The cake looked easy: one single loaf cake, one quantity of chocolate Vienna cream, and a snappily dressed egg-man hybrid with an inkly expressive face.

But, just like a maths is easy once you've seen the answer and the workings, so it was with reverse engineering the cake. Oh sure, to you all it's just a cake made to look like a brick wall. But, O! The humanity coconut. So much food colouring, so many small flecks of coconut flying around, and so much icing to stick it down. Luckily the cake came with its own icing, which tastes like crap but works well as glue.

Just when I think my mad skillz are improving, the AWW throws me another challenge. Decorating HD really, really stretched me. I am not an artist and I haven't decorated eggs since I was about 5, which made this trickier than I expected. At least I avoided having to actually source fabric and make clothes.
Truth be told, there was no glory* in this venture – but it was fun to make even though some adjustments were made out of necessity.

Degree of Difficulty: 6.5 (was going to be 5, but decorating the egg bumped it up...plus, I burnt the fucker).

Changes to the recipe: find a freakin doll to use instead of a real egg! Also, I chose to use multicoloured smarties instead of freckles or hundreds and thousands for the path – I had them on hand and there's no associated mess.

And, Betty, just for you and because I know neither of us have done our French homework:

Un petit d'un petit

S'étonne aux Halles

Un petit d'un petit

Ah! degrés te fallent

Indolent qui ne sort cesse

Indolent qui ne se mène

Qu'importe un petit d'un petit

Tout Gai de Reguennes.

(sound it out – don't attempt translation!)
*“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master that’s all.”
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. “They’ve a temper, some of them—particularly verbs, they’re the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!”

xxMartha