In the old days the content of the barrel would not be sweets but a black cat, wherefore most barrels are decorated with images of a black cats cut out of paper (agreed, it makes no sense at all).
My daughter insisted we bring a Shrovetide cake to the festivities at her kindergarten (makes perfect sense):
The cake was a chocolate sponge (450g melted butter whisked with 450g of caster sugar until white and fluffy, 8 lightly beaten eggs stirred in and then 450g flour and 4 teaspoons of baking powder and 8 tablespoons of cocoa is added. Pour into well greased baking tray and bake for 40 min at 175 degrees).
When the cake came out sugar syrup was poured over it and then the cake was cut into the desired shape and then covered in chocolate butter-creme.
I used homemade fondant for covering the cake and making the decorations - and that was the last time I'll ever do that (!!) unless I find a different recipe - the fondant was much too sticky and difficult to work with, so the result did not look like what I had envisioned, but I'll just try again next year :-)
