This is a cake of dry texture and quite decent taste. One could always spread jam on it - raspberry or apricot would be nice - if one wanted more sweet. I'm very proud of it. I liked it even better the next day. Not an egg in it and yes it holds together!

Prick through with fork making six diagonals. This keeps cake from warping and/or provides ready made pieces. Place on parchment baking paper cut a bit bigger (so you can use it to lift out the cake later).

Bring water to a boil, reduce to low/medium flame, cover leaving a steam vent.

Carefully remove the cake from the pan, lifting by the excess paper. I suppose it should cool, but I don't remember now.

The original is at the National Gallery in Washington D.C.
See a larger version of Lippi's painting here.

Last week my kids' art class did sumi-e bird painting. We also tried our hand at painting from stencil designs. Stencils have clear shapes, but unlike a regular silhouette the shapes are broken down into smaller well defined areas. The stumbling block is that one may get confused and want to turn the white spaces in the stencils into black outlines. But notice the top right painting - this child used a 1/2" wide flat brush after he'd tried other ways. He concentrated so hard at twisting and turning his brush to make those shapes. I am really impressed. You will see it is the goose/duck with outstretched wings from the bottom of the stencil page below.

See notecards of my bird watercolor paintings too.

Update: Another lesson on painting birds.