Sebastian Errazuriz

Faith can restore a fractured soul. When temperatures skyrocket, it can also be quite refreshing. Over the weekend, at a pre-Design Week party at Gallery R'Pure in New York's Flatiron District, Chilean-born artist Sebastian Errazuriz's latest work -- 100 wine-flavored popsicles molded around crosses instead of sticks -- was doled out and both literally and metaphorically consumed by an audience. As each popsicle was eaten, a wooden crucifix emerged, a drawing of Jesus decorating its center.

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Kathy A. McDonald

Flan with vanilla and citrus at Tres, SLS Hotel

Tacos, tequila and one more dish should be an ingredient for a proper Cinco de Mayo feast. On menus from Highland Park's My Taco to downtown's Border Grill to Santa Monica's El Cholo to almost every Mexican or Spanish-accented eatery in between, under desserts (postres) there will be flan. The ubiquitous caramelized-sugar-topped custard is an authentic and traditional Mexican dessert. Along with tres leches and churros. "You'll find all three everywhere in Mexico," says Border Grill's's Susan Feniger.

Flan came to Mexico via the Spanish colonization, and to its other colonies as well. (No legit Cuban restaurant is without it.) Flan's culinary origins, however, go further back than the Spanish colonial era and date to Roman times. Originally made with eggs and milk, the slowly cooked dish was sweetened with honey. Savory versions were popular, too, according to food historians and the site FlanRecipe.org -- eel flan was an ancient Roman delicacy, as was peacock tongue, although that dish doesn't seem to have had the same staying power.

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djjewelz/Flickr

Doughnuts

Arts group ForYourArt kicks off the opening of its location across the street from LACMA at 6020 Wilshire Blvd. on Saturday with a box of doughnuts to share, as you do on your first day of work when you want to endear yourself to your officemates. Because this is an arts group, after all, the sugary medium is the message: To coincide with LACMA's 24-hour screening of Christian Marclay's The Clock from noon Saturday to noon Sunday, ForYourArt will host "Around the Clock: 24-Hour Donut City" to comment on the nature of Los Angeles' sprawl and 24-hour doughnut shops.

Marclay, who was profiled in a lengthy article in last week's The New Yorker, spent three years compiling thousands of hours' worth of scenes from television and film where the time or a clock is shown, organizing them by hour and editing them together into one giant collage. The final movie is a full 24 hours, with each hour unfolding in real time, minute by minute, turning the film itself into a clock of sorts.

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Guzzle & Nosh

Pastry Chef Sally Camacho's Ovaltine Candy Bar at WP24

These past six months have been a game of musical chairs in the pastry department at two Wolfgang Puck restaurants. When pastry chef Sally Camacho left WP24 to oversee the pastry program at the reopening Wolfgang Puck at the Hotel Bel-Air, Cassie Ballard stepped in at WP24 with her own dessert menu. In late November, the two flip-flopped; Ballard shifted to the Hotel Bel-Air and Camacho returned to WP24. (Changes in the main kitchen, too: Chef John Lechleidner recently replaced Sara Johanes.)

After cooking her way to the finals of Top Chef Just Desserts and winning third place in the Valrhona C3 World Competition in Madrid (the highest an American has ever placed), Camacho is, once again, reworking the dessert menu at WP24. She has a few new tricks, including a fantastic Ovaltine "candy bar" inspired by a Quickfire challenge she won on Top Chef.

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Flickr/EvinDC

It beats French toast.

Remember Bill Cosby's classic 1982 routine about feeding his kids chocolate cake for breakfast? It went like this:

"The child wanted chocolate cake for breakfast! How ridiculous! ... And someone in my brain looked under chocolate cake and saw the ingredients: eggs! Eggs are in chocolate cake! And milk! Oh goody! And wheat! That's nutrition! ... And their father said, 'Chocolate cake coming up!!' ... And five children sat at breakfast and the morning music was playing and they were eating chocolate cake and singing songs to me: 'Dad is great! Give us the chocolate cake!'"

Cosby's creative take on the all-important first meal of the day (he gave them grapefruit juice, too!) didn't go over so well with Mrs. Cosby: "The skin and hair split and came off of her face so that there was nothing except the skull! And orange light came out of her hair and it lit all around! And fire shot from her eye sockets and began to burn my stomach! And she said, 'Where did they get chocolate cake from?!?'"

Thirty years later, Cosby's sweet breakfast idea has been vindicated. New research from a study at the University of Tel Aviv has found that eating dessert at breakfast could help promote weight loss for those with a sweet tooth, NASDAQ.com reports.

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disneytravelbabble.com

We always suspected Cinderella was just a golddigger. How much would you be willing to fork over for a birthday cake for your little princess? How about $112.05 for a 6-inch cake at Disneyland Disney World? (To be fair, that includes a "princess" balloon centerpiece, crystal-adorned tiara, photo-op with Cinderella AND tax and gratuity. But not lunch. That's separate.)

Disney World's new "Her Royal Highness Package" is being offered at the Orlando, Fla. theme park's Cinderella's Royal Table restaurant (upstairs in Cinderella's Castle), according to the Disney Food Blog (not associated with the Walt Disney Co.). The vanilla or chocolate cake is decorated with your choice of Ariel, Aurora, Belle, Cinderella or Tiana. According to the park's advertisement for the package: "Each princess cake design features a plastic princess bodice [they mean a bust, but Disney doesn't say 'bust'] atop a cone-shaped cake decorated to represent the chosen princess' dress. This cone-shaped layer is set upon a round cake, perfectly decorated to showcase the chosen princess."

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All images courtesy of PaulaDeen.com

Given Paula Deen's recent announcement about her Type 2 diabetes diagnosis and her partnership with Novo Nordisk, we thought we'd follow up our 5 Paula Deen Holiday Recipes We Don't Want To Try with a few more recipes we would suggest diabetics (and health-conscious eaters in general) stay away from. Or, try these out and satisfy an overactive sweet tooth.

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Screenshot from Amanda Oakleaf Cake's website

A life-sized Stormstrooper cake was almost completely edible

The team at Amanda Oakleaf Cakes created what might be the best cake in this galaxy or that galaxy far, far away: an enormous Stormtrooper cake, almost completely edible from boot to helmet. When completely assembled, the Stormtrooper stood 6 feet 4 inches tall, weighed a little bit more than 300 pounds, and fed some 600 sci-fi convention attendees presumably very hungry for dessert after attending panels like "Harry Potter, My Love for You Will Never Die" and "Lightsaber Combat of the Sword Masters."

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Miami Herald/Mike Jachles

Passion for Pastry's Althea Hickman with the $3,000 cake that was rejected and ultimately left unpaid.

Only the best for the King. So went the line of thinking when a $3,000 birthday cake was deemed unworthy of Miami Heat basketball player LeBron James and promptly discarded. And now no one's left to pick up the tab.

The Miami Herald reports that Boca Raton baker Alethea Hickman had received a frantic, all-caps e-mail requesting a cake two days before James' birthday party, to be held at the Shelbourne South Beach hotel. The hotel staff asked Hickman to waive the cost of the cake in exchange for the free publicity. After all, she'd be making the birthday cake for the most talented basketball player on the planet. But when Hickman checked online the day after hand-delivering her cake to the party, she saw that the cake featured in photos with James was ivory, decorated with sparklers and it definitely wasn't hers.

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Screenshot of Alice Medrich's Twitter page