The Sierpinski Cake

The verdict is in:  despite my less-than-perfect cutting and decorating skills, a Sierpinski cake does indeed look pretty cool.

I had been so distracted by the descriptions of triangular cupcake liners that I didn’t order any, but certainly those would have made for more equally shaped triangles and a crisper looking design.  This was made by baking a 9″×13″ cake, cutting it into 3 long strips, and doing a zigzag pattern on each to get 9 equilateralish triangles plus a bit extra.  Now I just need an extra-large platter for serving, because we are SO having this again sometime…

 

The mysterious triangle

I was just looking up triangular cupcake molds, as one does — or at least, as one does after the upcoming birthday child asks if their cake can be made into a Sierpinski triangle, and you both mull about it and then realize that that would be CRAZY because then no one would get any cake, and then you get distracted wondering if it could be approximated with cupcakes and you realize that would be awesome and the next time you make cupcakes they really should be displayed in a Sierpinski triangle — and  upon looking at a couple pages of molds I noticed a funny thing.

Amazon has trouble with triangles.

Granted, I only saw oddities on two pages, but since that’s 100% of the pages I looked at, it was still a pretty high percentage.

Exhibit #1:  Triangle is now a color:

Exhibit #2:  Triangles have a diameter:

Of course, triangles do in fact have a diameter, since there’s a maximal distance between points (which turns out to be the length of the longest side).  So presumably these are 2″ per side, and Amazon gets bonus points for an unnecessary use of Diameter.  I admit, though, that part of me thinks that what they called “diameter” was really the distance from a vertex to the opposite side, because from a visual perspective I think that seems the most like the diameter of a circle.  That would mean that the actual side length was (2/√3)*2″, or about 2.3″.  The other cupcake liners were 2″ to a side at the base and 2.4″ to a side at the top, which means that either number would be consistent even if these were the same size.

So in the end, I’m not sure of the answer.  What I am certain of, however, is that the Sierpinski approximation cupcake is an awesome idea, and should become a reality as soon as possible.