What better way to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the publication of Watson and Crick's landmark paper on the double helix structure of DNA than by making your own double-helix out of jellybabies and licorice? Dr Mark Lorch's method for making edible DNA models promises to capture the "elegant simplicity" of DNA.

You'll need:

Two long, flexible sweets, such as liquorice ribbons.

A few handfuls of soft, highly coloured sweets, such as jelly babies or marshmallows.

Cocktail sticks.

For advance bio-engineers, Lorch also explains how to extract the DNA from a kiwi fruit using things lying around your kitchen.

How to make a DNA double helix from jelly babies and liquorice [Dr Mark Lorch/Guardian]

(via Neatorama)

Here's an unexpected use for a dead hard-drive: use its motor to power a candy-floss machine:

A Chinese engineer who operates a data recovery and hard drive repair center is being hailed as a genius after inventing a DIY candy floss machine made from a used hard disk. According to the instructions, all that is needed to create your own candy floss maker is a hard drive that can still power up, a round flat metal tin, six bicycle spokes, an aluminum can and a plastic basin. A series of photos demonstrating how to create this candy floss machine have made some sensation across China internet …

The key to the improvised cotton candy maker is the hard drive’s rotating platter. Most commercial cotton candy machines spin at around 3,450 rotations per minute, while modern hard drives operate at 5,400 rotations per minute or higher. We’re really admired this kind of DIY creation from a technical nerd …

Turning an Old Hard Disk Into a Candy Floss Machine [English, MicGadget]

技术宅拯救世界：用旧硬盘自制棉花糖机(图) [Chinese, tt.mop.com]

(via Neatorama)

Last week, Tate & Lyle Sugars created a one-day pop-up cake hotel in Soho, where the rooms were stuffed with edible fixtures and furniture:

A Mediterranean-inspired bedroom, with edible furnishings, a caramel popcorn-filled bathtub, floating meringues and edible pearlescent popcorn bunting, all created using Light Soft Brown sugar. The perfect location for a midnight feast!

A Pirates of the Caribbean room, with a giant treasure chest full of edible pearls, ginger spiced doubloons and cutlasses, which visitors can spray gold themselves, and rum and raisin chocolate brownies and tea cakes – all made from Taste Experience Caribbean-inspired Light Muscovado sugar

A British-inspired Golden syrup sugar room, with a giant golden-syrup lion, patriotic treacle tarts in the shape of the British Isles and a giant tower of doughnuts

A Mayan-inspired room hidden in the cellar featuring a Mayan fudge temple, complete with floating meringue ‘clouds’, ‘sacrificial’ salted caramel and chocolate hearts, and Mayan-inspired carved gold cookies all made from Taste Experience Mayan-inspired golden caster sugar

A Mississippi-inspired ‘Mardi Gras’ room featuring a five foot long rainbow cake in the traditional colours of green, yellow & purple, gold baby heads and of course King Cakes

A Barbados-inspired library, with edible shells, and beautiful hand-painted cookies, fruit cakes and florentines showcased as museum features inside vintage glass jars, all made from Barbados inspired Dark Muscovado sugar

A Guyanese-inspired room, complete with a sea turtle cake, and cake ‘turtle eggs’ buried in mounds of Demerara sugar

A South Pacific-inspired room with a huge two metre high Easter Island statue, made entirely from chocolate mud cake baked using Golden Granulated sugar

SWEET DREAMS… WORLD’S FIRST CAKE HOTEL OPENS TO THE PUBLIC (via OhGizmo)

Here's a fun set of instructions for baking anatomical heart-shaped bread that you rip apart and gorge upon:

Nothing says romance like ritual cannibalism. Use this anatomical heart pull apart loaf to pretend you’re vampires feasting on the heart of that asshole in HR who gave a promotion to Brad. Alternately, you could engage in a little Indiana Jones cosplay where the sexy archaeologist in your life can rescue you from having your heart ripped out by any other man. Gentlemen bakers, you could show up at your vegetarian girlfriend’s house triumphantly holding this and declaring you were successful in the hunt, so tonight you feast. There are so many ways to express your doughy love.

Bitchin’ Bread Battle Day 13: Valentine’s Day Anatomical Heart Pull Apart Bread (via Neatorama)

This wonderful Jawa birthday cake was made by adapting a teddy-bear cake mold, garnishing it with chocolate fondant and adding mini-party-light LEDs from a craft store. It was created by the wife of Flickr user Fat Tony 1138 for their daughter's fifth birthday. Lucky kid!

Jawa Birthday Cake (via Geeks are Sexy)

This amazing EVE Online Gallente Space Station cake was created by Duff Goldma of Charm City Cakes in Baltimore, MD. It's unquestionably the greatest MMORPG space-station cake I've ever seen.

Dock Your Fork in This Gallente Space Station Cake

Ashley Rodriguez has tweaked a recipe for homemade "Cadbury's" Easter creme eggs from Instructables user Scoochmaroo and published it. The store-bought version of these glop-filled chocolate eggs always seem like a good idea until they get halfway down my oesophagus (whereupon they try to reverse direction); who knows, maybe a "small batch" homemade one with less HFCS and plutonium* will continue to reward ingestion all the way to my digestive tract's terminus.

½ cup Lyle’s golden syrup
6 tablespoons butter, softened
½ teaspoon salt
3 drops orange blossom water (optional)
1 vanilla bean, seeds removed (optional)
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cup powdered sugar
¼ to ½ teaspoon yellow food coloring
12 ounces dark chocolate, chopped (or 1 bag bittersweet chocolate chips)

Homemade Cadbury Creme Eggs (via Lifehacker)

*Or whatever Cadbury's uses to attain that "Holy shitting Cthulhu, what have I just swallowed?" sensation

Remember Katie Fisher? She was the 24 year old who was killed crossing the street by a driver who ran a red light, only to have Progressive Insurance -- her own insurance company -- pay to defend her killer in court, and then lie about it. Her brother, comedian Matt Fisher, has decided to honor her memory with Katie Fisher Day, a day when people bake cookies and send them to their friends (Katie sent Matt a batch of cookies every week while he was at university).

Step 1: Pick someone you love. It can be your mom, your brother, your friend, some guy at work. Anyone you’d like to feel a little more loved.

Step 2: Bake them cookies. Any kind will do! Chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin. Are you a crappy baker? Send them crappy cookies. Or buy some. It’s the thought that counts. We’ll post recipes here on the site. Post yours if you have a good one!

Step 3: Send those cookies. Mail them. Drop them off in person. Whatever’s easier. Just make sure you send them! The goal is to send them on March 12 or have them get to your person by March 12, but look, if you send someone cookies on another day, we’re cool with that.

Step 4: There is no Step 4. This is a simple thing. Let’s not overcomplicate it. Though we would love it if you told us about your special someone, sent photos of your cookies and/or sent us a recipe.

Katie Fisher Day (Thanks, Matt!)

Last night I finally got to see one of Evil Miss Cakehead's edible horror installations in person. The Helpers is a grotesque, edible pop-up shop in Bethnal Green Road near Brick Lane, which opened last night. It features dismembered bodies, murder weapons, cigarette butts, car batteries with wires, blood-spattered knives, bags of vomit, Chinese takeout meals, and even a television -- all made of cake, all edible, and all delicious. There really are no words for the dissonance presented by such a scene. But it's pretty special.

So last night we opened The Helpers – a experiential experience serving cocktails and cake all themed around the movie of the same name – a stunt for Koch Media. The creations were incredible and (never thought I would say this) we pushed the limits so far we are all looking forward to some pretty cake projects for Valentine’s Day and beyond. You can see all the cakes over on Miss Cakehead’s Facebook page, and them featured on This Morning here. Just bear in mind they were for a horror film so they are made to the brief set by our client Koch Media. We have not just lost our minds and started making really dark cakes. In fact the chocolate gun was so disturbing and realistic we gave it as an extra present to someone who has always been massively supportive of our work (I had to get it out of there!). Huge thanks to Original Content London for creating an awesome and very disturbing set.

The Helpers – Horror Movie Edible Installation

Read the rest