Cute detailed scrumptious nursery-rhyme cupcakes

Flickr user AbbieTabbie makes astonishingly awesome, detailed nursery-rhyme cupcakes that evinced two involuntary reactions from me: my jaw dropped and my salivary glands started pumping.


Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.

The origins of this Nursery Rhyme are unclear, but the following is one theory ......

Jack and Jill are the 18th century Louis XVI of France, who was deposed and beheaded (lost his crown), and his Queen, Marie Antoinette (who came tumbling after). The words and lyrics were made more palatable for the nursery by giving it a happy ending.

Chocolate cupcake with fondant covering and gumpaste decorations, and is 2 1/2" in diameter.


Humpty Dumpty was apparently an unusually large canon which was mounted on the protective wall of "St. Mary's Wall Church" in Colchester, England. It was intended to protect the Parliamentarian stronghold of Colchester which was temporarily under the control of the Royalists during the English Civil War ( 1642 - 1649). A shot from a Parliamentary canon succeeded in damaging the wall underneath Humpty Dumpty causing it to fall to the ground. The Royalists - "all the King's men" - attempted to raise Humpty Dumpty on to another part of the wall but even with the help of " all the King's horses" they failed and Colchester fell to the Parliamentarians after a siege lasting eleven weeks.


Hickory Dickory Dock,
The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck one,
The mouse ran down!
Hickory Dickory Dock.

You may be relieved to learn I don't really have much history on this rhyme except that It is said that the rhyme alludes to Richard Cromwell's one year reign as Lord Protector of England.

However, you may not know that in the full version there are in fact verses that go from one o'clock right up to twelve noon!

Mary, Mary quite contrary
How does your garden grow,
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row


The tragic Mary, Queen of Scots, is the heroine of the rhyme, "Mary, Mary quite contrary". The cockle shells and silver bells are supposed to have been ornaments on a dress given to her by her first husband, the Dauphin of France. The pretty maids all in a row were her ladies in waiting, the famous Four Marys.

Another Nursery Rhyme .... another History lesson for you!


Ring around the roses
A pocketful of posies,
Atishoo! Atishoo!
We all fall down!

Many children's Nursery Rhymes have their origins in historical events, more often than not rather unpleasant ones!
I personally find these origins fascinating.

"Ring a Ring O' Roses" is said to be a macabre parody on the horrors of the Great Plague. One of the first signs of the plague was a ring of rose-coloured spots, and the protection against this terrible disease was, in popular belief, a posy of herbs. Sneezing was taken as a sure sign that you were about to die of it, and the last line "We all fall down" omits the word, "dead"!

Fondant iced with sugar(gum)paste roses.


Four and twenty blackbirds .....
by abbietabbie (flickr)