Let's eat Africa!

Perhaps it should be somewhat embarrassing to be eating Africa, given that our normal consumption of this diverse continent is a media diet of starving children, lost migrants, mad dictators, unsanitary refugee camps, bloody civil wars, sky-rocketing crime rates, bizarre voodoo rituals, genital mutilation and slaughtered wildlife. It all seems to require us not to provide cake, but a general sense of powerlessness, misery, regret and guilt.

Unfortunately, I do not do those states very well. But I do make a mean cake. Then let us proceed unashamedly. Biscuit dough with a huge dollop of cocoa powder makes a fine land mass. Chocolate chips make mountains, marzipan makes effective desert and the chemistry lab can provide us with blue running rivers for the Nile, Congo, Niger, and Lake Victoria.

Enjoy.

Thank you, Ellen McHenry, for supporting this child-friendly approach to African history, politics and economy in Mapping the world with Art. (And cake.)